the amazing flowers of an enormous ceiba speciosa

Ceiba speciosa dibujo

One of my favorite oak individuals. A coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) who's had some run-ins with ivy and misteltoe, still making the best of the steep hillside – with last fall's green acorns – and the flowers growing at their feet this spring. I'm not great at identifying bulb flowers (everything looks like a daffodil to me), so if you know who these guys are please share their name. Narcissus what? I'll take any kind of common name, too - these are just as important.

This oak grows near a group of really strong buckeyes - I'm pretty sure they're Aesculus californica. I've always thought both coast live oaks and buckeyes have the most beautiful skeletons - agrifolia branches in curls, and there's something so compelling about bare winter buckeyes before they send out new leaves. Both feel so solid. The trees in my area have been struggling over the last few years, and a long rainy season has been very welcome. I truly thought it was over when we had that hot spell, but then we got some strong showers of the last few days. I feel like I've heard more frogs this season than I have in the whole of the time we've lived here.

I recently had another bereavement (a few too many in too few years). It's come at a bad time, with too much to do. I'm not sure what I'd do if I weren't able to go out and see and hear things growing. Red shouldered hawks use these buckeyes and oaks to scan for squirrels and woodrats. I found a tiny agrifolia sapling growing in a forgotten outdoor planter on my porch, and will have to decide where to put them and how best to care for them when they outgrow that. Crows hassle ravens in the redwoods up the street - underneath the redwoods is a damp skirt of captured fog. Probably there are tardigrades luxuriating there. I have a warm shelter when it's wet outside. Not everything is grief, or aggrieved, or grieving. Probably in different circumstances I'd look for some other way to prove that, but it's helpful to be able to just walk outside and see so many lives turning on and over.

18th to 19th Century Medicinal Plant Illustrations # 12

Cinnamomum Camphora F. Nees et Eberm., (Cinnamomum camphora (L.) J. Presl), Camphor tree

Fencing along the perimeter of Owase Jinja Shrine (尾鷲神社) in Owase, Mie Prefecture, with the sacred husband & wife camphor tree (夫婦楠) to the right and a banner announcing the upcoming Yaya Matsuri (ヤーヤ祭) February 1st-5th to the left

Photo by Asturio Cantabrio, January 2020 (see source)

Anime : Tonari no Totoro

3,000 year old Camphor tree

Pistacia Atlantica trees (Colour version) by mohamedbentireche

Anne Carson, from The Glass Essay

Members of carnivora paired with their common ancestor, a miacid. 

People watching a solar eclipse squint through smoked glass or film on Rebun Island in Japan, March 1949. Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams, National Geographic

Sylvia Plath, "The Rival." Ariel

Byzantine column from Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey)

Antalya, Turkey by Talip Çetin

𝔑𝔬𝔨𝔥𝔲𝔯 𝔠𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔶. 𝔏𝔬𝔠𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔳𝔦𝔩𝔩𝔞𝔤𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔑𝔬𝔨𝔥𝔲𝔯 (𝔗𝔲𝔯𝔨𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔫)