Fall has arrived here now in my garden and each new day I appreciate what remaining days of life my purple Morning Glories ~ President John Tyler ( my son's name is Tyler so very easy for me to remember and of course they are quite invasive but oh so beautiful ) and Heavenly Blue flowers may have left to enlighten all of the creatures great and small including myself who visit them in their garden bed.
Each season has it's unique beauty and I really can't make up my mind of which I am more fond of. I suppose I like them all, for each is a forecast on weather, more or less measured by time that must begin and end into the other, each of them bringing forth a special spice of their making in creating the new unseasoned stage in the circle of life. And so I take full grasp of this coming season still reluctantly letting go the last days of summer.
Rising early on Autumn mornings brings in view cool misty landscapes filled with the smell of musty wood burning in the farm fields and the aroma of freshly perked coffee that hubby had made earlier while I was still in my bed. If you might be a dog walker or photographer much like myself, then this is the most perfect time of the day to capture the magic the changing climate creates on the pastoral serene landscape. In my opinion an early morning walk is probably the best walk of the day followed by a Dusk and Moonlight walk. This morning I took a walk and like all others before I never return empty handed or without some sort of thought filling my mind.
Walking quietly down the leaf laden road of the woods doesn't avert me in making common and expected crunching sound upon the dry russet leaves of Fall and if any little feathered bird be about undoubtedly would be stirred into flight but this morning seemed quiet and I suppose they must of still been asleep ; )
Sometimes on these private walks I take alone ,maybe more often than I think, I stop dead in my tracks when I come upon an old ancient tree covered in moss and lichen bearing a couple of holes where once a creature or creatures made their home sheltered from the storms that only the old tree and his partisan neighbours saw and weathered alone.
On this particular day I had noticed one such tree, with roots visibly gnarled, twisted almost like the hands of an elderly person afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis tightly clutched around a rock and what seemed to be a piece of it's lost wooden limb.Around it's base small toad stools grew and moss covered much of the remaining roots.
Even in it's dwindling life the old tree's beauty and form still remained and I wondered, if it too feels and endures the pain of old age.
Like an ancient stone or delicate flower trees were born in one place , never leaving their womb in a sense, only given one option,to entrust their lives with mother earth.
Now is Autumn's golden hours and I must not fail to miss it's beauty in all of it's bright and faded colour for it too has but a number of days before I step on that one remaining purple leaf of Autumn's Fall.
It is this magical landscape,ever changing,never quite the same,always unique like a brand new life that takes seize of my mind and imagination.
Yes, it's quite true ….
" The Natural world may be the most ancient subject of human art."
Although not an Old Oak or in a secluded wood this old Maple stands in another place I adore to frequent ~ The Silent Graveyard
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So Dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So Dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
~ Robert Frost
The Haunted Oak ~ Annabelle Original 2012
Totally Inspired by Nature and Little Spirit Cedar of Lake Superior
This uniquely hand crafted old oak tree is made of copper wire and solder and solidly anchored unto a piece of burled wood , eternally rooted in it's place. It's size and weight a miniature to the real old oak that stands towering above the tethered trees in the wood below.
In it's stark ,crooked and contorted form he looks a little bit spooky and a tiny bit creepy seeming like this tree might just be haunted or maybe he's just dressed up for Halloween ; )
Soon Available on Etsy