Tag Archives: Interlaken

To Farm or Not

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I was born and grew up in the urban and suburban Midwest USA—Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland—had to drive for miles to see farms, the places where we could buy fresh corn on the cob and watermelon from small makeshift roadside stands. These were grown on huge extensive plains. A consumer, I was a consumer.

I had no idea what farmers had to do over a 12 month or more cycle so that they would have ‘produce’ to sell to me from their roadside stand.

Decades later, I am still a consumer; but I live in a community that has been for generations small scale farmers. Each and every farm house has apple trees and walnut trees growing close by. Even the generations who have moved into the dense village have planted small fruit and nut trees. Why?

This first image reflects a spiritual understanding that nature is unpredictable and a reverence for a greater power is essential for farmers. So many things can go wrong with weather, climate and the geophysical that a season, a year may come anytime to take away the food necessary for farmer life. Imagine no grocery store with well stocked shelves, imagine no 7-11/24-7-365 convenience. Imagine if you had no access to food. Farmers make plans that their families never have to suffer such a hardship.

This means long hours everyday, year round. Just grab a short bit of relaxation from time to time. Hard life. I can see it all around me these days. Yet, I, as a consumer with a second-hand sympathy for farmers, sometimes feel envious of how much determination, commitment and practical knowledge they bring with them day-in, day-out to solve problems beset on them by nature and changing government regulations.

So this year, I have enjoyed observing the ripening process of fruits and nuts—apples and walnuts.

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The Alphorn is a conduit providing mystic connections between music, people and the landscape.

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Walnut trees on every farm.

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The apple of my eye on every farm.

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Walnuts in green—the husks in first stages of ripening.

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Signs that ripening is progressing—the husk prepares to break open.

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The walnut reveal.

Apple and walnut torte or apple and walnut kuchen…your choice.:)

Trees Telling Forests Things

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Can’t tell the forest from the trees. Or is it the other way around–can’t tell the trees from the forest. Can’t tell. 

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Can’t tell the trees from the trunk and branches.

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Can’t tell the trunk and branches from the leaves.

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Can’t tell the leaves from the needles and cones.

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Can’t tell anything…I’m lost…and happy…don’t tell.

 

Teach, Teaching, Taught

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I like to share things about plants, gardens and landscape. Things that can enliven and inspire.

But this set of photos is only about sharing perception in what I think of as teaching.

Every day I have mountains in my face. These photos how some of them. In particular, these photos tell a story that is quite visually apparent in early spring.

Here are the stories or rather the lessons learned:

  1. Spring comes earlier at lower elevations than higher elevations.
  2. Higher elevations have conifer only forests. Lower elevations have deciduous only forests. The two forest types merge in the middle elevations.
  3. And the last image is a close up of the glorious electric lime green at this stage of spring growth.
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Notice the green grasses in the lower elevations. Compare it to the brown yellow grasses at the higher elevations.

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Darker green forest trees are conifers. Spring green forests are deciduous.

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Electric lime green spring foliage on a mixture of deciduous trees.

Is that flower wild?

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Or is it just having fun?

I had the joy of observing these two patches of flowers yesterday.

One is wild in the woods and the other is wild in the garden. Judging books by their covers, are we?

But someone has written that having a book in your pocket is like having a garden in your pocket. Then where do the wild flowers belong?

But anywhere you find them, they are a discovery pleasure of spring.

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Wild in the garden

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Wild in the woods