Todays tree was the Yew and our word Apricity…we spent time with our trees, looking for changes and clues for identifying them.
We drank mulled apple and made paper cut lanterns whist talking about light and the benefits of light, moonbathing and of course apricity – the warmth of the winter sun ?,  which didn’t make an appearance!
We sang songs too and listened to Matthews poems and stories.
 
Matthew’s poems

A tree grows in the garden

A tree grows in the garden.

The tree waits and watches.

It sees the seasons turn and the flowers bud and bloom and die away.

It hears the birds sing and the foxes bark, and the cars thrum as they pass behind the tall stone wall.

A tree grows in the garden,

The tree wanes and waxes.

It gives shade to the ferns that grow beneath its branches, shelter to the insects that live within its bark, seeds to the birds and squirrels when the seasons change.

A tree grows in the garden.

The tree spreads and stretches.

It remembers the birds that built their nests and raised their young amongst its leaves; the brightly coloured plastic kite that tangled in its upper branches and stayed there for years, fluttering in the breeze like a tattered flag; the young girl who shinned up its trunk and climbed too high and fell and broke her kneecap on the hard packed earth.

A tree grows in the garden.

The tree dreams and drowses.

It waits as the seasons turn and the people pass and the climate shifts and changes.

It hopes the garden will remain and the birds will return and that there will be other climbers – lucky or unlucky. And that the seeds it drops will germinate and grow and bloom and bear seeds in their turn. And that the world will not change too fast or too much. And that there will always be space and time to watch and wait, to stretch and spread, to drowse and dream, as trees have always done.

A tree grows in the garden.

 

For the love of trees …

Dendrophile

Forest friend

Canopy connector

Coppice companion

Bark buddy

Sap symbiont

Shrub shelterer

Leaf lover

Greenwood guardian

Wood well-wisher

Tree trustee

 

And from the previous week here’s Peter’s Blackthorn poem
Blackthorn Discovery

I have walked past you
looking making my way
to the café or the barn
not noticing your sentry
by the entrance to the place
I notice your broken heart
branches healing it round
mossy tolerance soften your branches
but your spiky thorns don’t fool me.