Month: December 2018

See the last post….where the mayhem went down.

“Mercer House…..stood at the west end of   Monterey Square, the most elegant of Savannah’s many tree-shaded  squares. It was an Italianite mansion of red brick with tall arched windows set off by ornate ironwork balconies. It sat back from the street , aloof behind its apron of lawn and its cast iron fence, not so much looking out on the square as presiding over it”

–‘Midnight  In The Garden Of  Good And Evil’, John Berendt.

These epiphytic ,dangling specimens were photographed in the centre of Savannah, GA. One of the reasons I wanted to visit there was John Berendt’s terrific non-fiction novel of  murder(and so much more),‘Midnight in The Garden of Good And Evil’. set there. In one spooky scene (set in a graveyard where voodoo rites are to be enacted) ,he wrote:

“A solid wall of trees rose before us on the opposite shore. It was a forbidding black mass without a single light visible……..Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I became aware of dense shrubbery around us and of the ghostly drapery of Spanish moss.”

This ,and the preceding photos, depict the aerial roots of the NZ Pohutukawa tree. They are thick, matted groupings, some well over a metre in length. The beautiful crimson flowers of the tree are stunning  in summer but the aerial roots are way more fascinating to me. I am reminded of Spanish moss hanging from trees in the southern US, also very cool. As I went up to Georgia and South Carolina last year and loved the moss in the trees,have more appreciated our own dangling wonders. Will dig around  for a photo shot of the Spanish moss and post.

Ever felt completely stuck?

“An injured lion still wants to roar.” -Randy Pausch

“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, miracles occur.” – Henry Miller.

“Consider the lilies of the field whose bloom is brief :- we are as they; like them we fade away, as a leaf does.” – Christina Rosetti

My comment : I was reminded earlier in the year that life is actually really fragile, when I survived a close brush with death – all the more reason to enjoy and treasure the times of bloom.

Sometimes things get out of their place and time; it can be that way for us too.

This image is of flora housed in a fantastical glass pavilion, a conservatory. In this artificial bubble, plants that have no place to be where they are right now, thrive.

Being  a bit, or even completely, out of sync with the outside world doesn’t mean that growth cannot occur…