Trees and Life

I hope you will forgive me for using my photos again but sometimes when I look at them they suggest things I would like to say. This post is mostly photos of trees of one size or type. The thing about trees is that they are stupendous. They have their own wonderful and unique beauty at any season.

And at each season they reflect in such a fantastically obvious way the amazing processes of nature especially of life and death.

This is Tony the shepherd and the trees at their fullest

Each growing thing, including we humans, starts out with what it takes to grow and multiply and die. In spring the fresh beauty: flower and seed, in summer a coming to maturity - sometimes looking a bit eaten and worn and then of course in fall, the process of death at least of some part of the plant or tree. 

Is this the instinct for survival we all have?

Trees and all growing things also help to keep us alive by providing the air we need - that is why people worry about the cutting of forests especially perhaps the Amazon rainforest which provides our planet with 20% of our oxygen apart from all the other amazing  things that live and grow there. 

This makes me think of community: grow together, help one another survive.

I guess what I am wanting to say then is that the trees around us provide us with beauty, with life, with amazement. So let us love them and care for them, treasure them and protect them.

Is this not breathtaking ?

A quote from that wise man, Thich Nhat Hanh* We can get so caught up in our plans, fears, agitations and dreams that we aren't living in our bodies anymore and we are not in touch with our real mother, the Earth, either. We can't see the miraculous beauty and magnificence that our planet offers to us. We are living more and more in the world of our minds and becoming increasingly alienated from the physical world...Our planet is right here, powerful, generous and supportive at every moment. 

*Thich Nhat Hanh: Love Letter to the Earth, Parallax Press, Berkeley, Calif., 2013