Expanding

I realize, right now, that I need to expand the way I think about this blog. For some reason, when I started it I felt it needed to be more thoughtful or well written than your average blog. I wanted it to be more than daily musings. But as I read more blogs I realize that is what a blog is and I like reading what other people are thinking about. It is mere musing and it can be amusing! So from now I give myself permission to write whatever comes to mind in this space and not to limit it to "tree related" because in truth, everything I do is related to everything I do. I still love the title "I am a tree" and I feel more and more that I am related to the trees. As my awareness of plants grows through my new found love of gardening, my relationship to all plants is blossoming. (Excuse the pun) When I walk my daughter to school in the morning, I can hear the flowering bushes at the entrance practically say good morning! And further up the path I pass under a magnificent Live Oak tree that would make a beautiful painting if I could find a canvas large enough. Every day it tells me the same thing as I walk under its enormous branches that tower at least twenty feet above me. I love you is what I say to the tree and it always answers me back.

My original intention with this blog was to post once a week. I wasn't keeping up with that because I was holding the bar too high for the writing. Now that I am letting myself off the hook, I hope to write every week at least!

Earth Air Fire Water

I am in New Mexico, on a retreat whose theme is "Thriving or surviving?" I am in a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains, evergreens and cactus, rocks and lots of birds. Ravens are raising their young in a nest outside the front door of this palace. I meant place but it is a palace. Perched high up with views that allow me to see the clouds coming up on us. It is a sanctuary, set up to honor and work in harmony with the elements. Precious rainwater is collected and stored in underground tanks. An extensive gray water system and an outhouse for guests conserve more water. The buildings are designed to make the most of the sun's heat and light and various small solar-powered outdoor lights waste no energy. The earth is cultivated with love and food is grown abundantly in a large outdoor garden, a green house and a modest orchard. The air is crisp and clean and the wind blows all the seeds and stuff around so more stuff can grow and baby birds can learn to fly! It is no accident that everything in this place is thriving. It is thoughtfully designed to make the most of the land and what it has to offer. The plants are cultivated with love by very experienced hands and the buildings are kept up with diligence. I am going home today and my heart is bursting with anticipation and the intention to take care of my own garden, and the property that I have the honor of living on. I must admit I have let the garden go a little over the last month or so and it is now in survival mode. The main lesson of the retreat that I took home was "Your garden is a reflection of you!" and it is so true. When the garden is just surviving, chances are that is my mode too. But when it's thriving, look out!

Butterfly Birds Nest

Mother Nature has been very generous with me this week. I don't know if she is egging me on to get back to my drawings instead of playing with words all day, but that is the feeling I get. As I was putting my kids to bed last night I reached up to draw the curtain closed and noticed a butterfly right up against the outside of the screen window. I realized it was dead, trapped in a spider's web. I ran outside to get it, afraid I might forget if I didn't do it right away. It is a pretty common butterfly called a Painted Lady that is mostly orange and brown and black. But the underside is incredible. It has a very loose pattern of regular teardrop shapes that are shiny silver surrounded by bright yellow and orange. The design is elegant and surprising. I never would have discovered the underside if not for the spiders web that was still clinging to the wings and made me inadvertently flip her over as I moved her inside. I am very excited to make a drawing of both sides of her wings.

Then yesterday as I was taking the girls home after some fun at a friend's pool, we were crossing over someone's front lawn on the way to the car and I almost tripped over a bird's nest. It was the first nest I've found, I think in my life. I have another nest that was found on a walk in the woods of Vermont with a friend, but my friend discovered it. This one seemed, like the butterfly, to have been placed in a way that I could not miss it or mistake it for anything other than a gift, meant especially for me. Thank you. Can't wait to start drawing.

Poem

The birds are busy
singing in the dark
their insistent calling
leafing over
the lulling strum
of the freeway

How is it
that they live in trees
sleep on twigs
survive on worms
and sing so pretty?

Hike

Went for a four hour hike with my friend Kimberly in Ojai. Never been to Ojai before. Nice little typical southern California town. We hiked up into a big canyon. It was green, you could say lush in its way. I was following my footsteps. Concentrating on balancing, breathing, moving with a steady rhythm. A tiny paper white Poppy with lavender edges and three faint blue dots in a triangle centered on each petal stood alone beside the well-worn path lined with Sage bushes and Manzanitas celebrating itself. Its delicate colors vibrated against the sandy ochre rocks beneath our trudging feet that were being ground into smaller and smaller pieces, pebbles and finally dust.

We stopped beside a small stream for a rest in the shade. I sat on the trunk of a tree that was growing almost horizontally before stretching straight up again, making a bench with a back rest that swayed a little with my weight. Sometimes nature is so accommodating. I noticed a spider above me that was very still. It was hanging in its web, dangling with the breeze. I looked closer to see that it was dead. I imagined a mother spider who had produced hundreds of babies before giving in to her dying.

On our way back down the mountain, the sun was stronger and beat us down our descent. Another dead bug. This time a large beetle with legs up in the air. What happened to him? Was he simply unable to right himself? Imagine being that close to accidental suicide all your life. It reminded me of a moment a couple of weeks earlier when I was sitting on the porch of my father’s house one evening, with my sister. We heard the loud buzzing of a beetle flying around, banging into the screens while we were talking. A pretty common occurrence there, we didn’t mention it or wonder what it was. Finally, as she was laying on the bench, deep into a story about her daughter, I watched the big black bug come flying toward the lamp standing just east of my sisters head. He made a big slow circle around the lamp and then crashed into the metal lampshade and fell to the ground. My sister wasn’t aware of the tragedy from her head. Before going to bed I checked on him, surprised he was still lying on the floor. He was dead. You keep finding dead bugs, said Kimberly, but I disagree. They keep finding me.

Spring Thing

Spring is amazing this year here in Pasadena. We have had three weeks of nonstop gorgeous weather. I always think of spring in LA as frustratingly short as the cool, more dramatic winter weather gives way to a few warm days and then suddenly the relentless endless hot arrives and I wonder where did spring go? Not this year. I don't know if it's lasting longer or I am just appreciating it more but we've had cool breezy days with sunshine that dare me to wear sandals and warm evenings that make me excited to leave the house. Now that it stays light later we've been eating dinner outside, and since we eat early we get to watch the garden buzzing as it shifts from the late afternoon bright heat to a calm cool dusk. We munch on salad from the garden and watch the butterflies. The avocado tree is exploding. It is covered in little white blossoms and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of bees in its branches. I can't get over how busy it is in my backyard this year. I don't know if it's just a spring thing to feel like everything is new but I really don't think I noticed all the hubbub before.

The Japanese Maple that was hidden behind a dying lemon tree until we took down the old guy now stands like a centerpiece with these incredible delicate pink flowers that are like little treasures in its leaves. And the newly planted citrus are laden with their more obvious and fragrant blossoms. My little apple tree, also newly planted and who I pray for since this is not really the climate for apples, is trying hard to push out some buds. The insects are working overtime too. We see baby lady bugs all over and the bees and the flies and the mosquito catchers and spiders and all the worms in the garden so many worms all toiling away at their jobs, whatever they are. I don't pretend to know what they're doing and when the kids ask we say things like, "Oh they're eating and moving stuff around, just like we do." I just can't believe how lucky I am to live here, to have a big backyard where I can watch this all happen, to have three piles of compost and to grow my own lettuce.

tree bark hands

I guess I am ready to tell the real story behind the title of this blog. I have eczema on my hands which makes them resemble scraggly branches. My skin literally looks more like bark than epidermis. It is rough and uneven with deep wrinkles, patchy areas of swelling and flaking with gashes sores and welts just to add to the rainbow. (The gashes are from the digging and scratching I do with my nails while I sleep because it feels like the itch is in my bones.) Another thing is that when I turn my hands over, the palms and the undersides of my fingers are smooth and clear and youthful as ever, which reminds me of the layer right under tree bark. That is where all the action is. Where the tree is actually growing and moving and doing all the good stuff it needs to reproduce, right there just under the dead outer layer.

I keep looking at my condition and observing what it is really doing to me. I notice that I can tolerate it most of the time which is pretty amazing considering how intense the itching, burning and stinging can be. When it gets too hard to bear I whip out my handy little tin of Shea butter that I carry in my pocket and slather some on. This provides a little temporary relief. I try to keep track of how many times a day I do that as a guage for how my skills at detachment are coming along. I am not sure that's the right word but managing pain is a skill I have always possessed not being a fan of pain killers or numbing of any kind. I have avoided pain medication in situations from dental work to back pain to childbirth. But it is one thing to deal with pain when you know it will be over in a matter of minutes or hours. And another when it is with you every second of every day and even worse at night. So this is teaching me to do more than just breath through it, it is forcing me to literally change my mind. For example, if I take inventory of what I am thinking about when the eczema screams for my attention, I always find some worry, these days mostly about money.

I am trying to heal the eczema myself not only by disciplining my mind, but also with the help of some amazing health practitioners that support self-healing. And even though my condition is as bad or worse than it was a year ago, I know I am making headway because I don't worry about it anymore, and that is a great achievement. It used to be a bigger stress on my life when I saw it as a problem I needed to solve as soon as possible. Now it is a stresser because it makes me work so damn hard! And after a year of this, I realize I cannot control it, it will be here kicking my ass for as long as I need my ass kicked, and it has taught me a lot already. The most important lesson is the constant daily reminder to Pay Attention to what my brain is doing. And second of all Patience, which is a great thing to have up your sleeve in any situation but especially with kids. Another is Faith. I trust that it will eventually go away. It may not disappear any time soon and I know it is not going away when I want it to (which was yesterday). But I am AS sure it will disappear as I am sure my toddler will learn to use the potty. It is inevitable. And I will be interested to see when it happens. Faith in myself is key and that is a great lesson.