Psalm 1 🌲
2 Blessed is the Man who delights in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its 🍒fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
Recently, I came across an article in the newspaper about job satisfaction which inspired this month's blog post. Huh? How do we get from job satisfaction to a discussion about trees?
The following information was gleaned from that article.
South Jersey Times
IN DEPTH 1/12/23 p A12
A review of more than 13,000 time journals from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey conducted research about job satisfaction and discovered that farmers and lumberjacks were the workers most satisfied with their employment. People working in those two fields worked outdoors, a major contributing factor in their happiness. Even seeing a tree outside your window can help you recover from illness faster!
Dana Chadler, co-owner of Family Tree and Forestry in
South Carolina described her work as therapeutic.
In spite of all the challenges a logger faces, not many want to make a career change. She says being in the woods humbles you.Forestry forces you to work on a slower time scale. It pushes you to have a generational outlook. We are planting trees that we will not see harvested.
I have a close friend who believes in reincarnation. She told me once she wants to come back as a tree! 🌳
Trees are mentioned numerous times in the Bible. In the Genesis story of creation, Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowlege of Good and Evil when He explicitly forbade it! 👹
In the New Testament, salvation is made available by the sacrificial death of Jesus on a Tree--also known as the cross.
Hundreds of poems site them in their rhymes. Joyce Kilmer's Trees is one of the first poems I memorized, inspiring an interest in writing some of my own poetry in the years that followed.
( see below)
They are great subjects for 📷 photography! There is such variety. Even the same tree may look different depending on the season or time of day.
🌞 ⛄ 🏈
A number of my photos of trees are posted within the writing. I could have included several more.
While having meals at the kitchen table in our former abode, we could look out of the window and watch the trees reawakening each Spring. A number of weeping willows surrounded the retainer pond and I loved seeing their "hair" grow. They also reminded me of a bride's vail.Some trees live to be very old. Their rings attest to that. Much history took place in their shade, such as the Penn Great Elm Tree along the Delaware River, where William Penn met with members of the Lenni Lenape Tribe to sign a peace treaty in the 1600s. Those same tribe members also made famous the Salem Oak tree in Salem, NJ, located not far from where I live. Unfortunately, it uprooted and collapsed in 2019 after surviving for about 600 years! It grew to a height of 100 feet and had a circumference of 22 feet. Acorns were harvested from the tree and disbursed to all 565 municipalities in the state. It is estimated that those 500 plus trees will remove 2.1 million lbs. of carbon monoxide, conserve 1.2 million kilowatts of electricity, and intercept 27.1 million gallons of stormwater.
THE HEART 💝 OF THE TREE
-Henry Bunner
What does he plant who plants a tree?
☀ He plants a friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high.
He plants a home to heaven a nigh.
For song and mother-croon of bird
In hushed and happy twilight heard—
The treble of heaven’s harmony—
These things he plants who plants a tree. 🐦 🐥
What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants cool shade and tender ☔ rain,
And seed and bud of days to be,
And years that fade and flush again;
He plants the glory of the plain;
He plants the forest’s heritage
The harvest of a coming age;
The joy that unborn eyes shall see—
These things he plants who plants a tree.
What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants, in sap and leaf and wood,
In love of home 🏠 and loyalty
And far-cast thought of civic good—
His blessing on the neighborhood
Who in the hollow of His hand
Holds all the growth of all our land—
A nation’s growth from sea to sea
Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.
Sadly, these wonders of nature are not indestructible. They sometimes cause damage when they come down.
I suppose for many, the Christmas tree should be included in this discussion. About 120 million trees are harvested during the season, causing great harm to the environment. Use of artificial trees is strongly recommended.
Due to the size of our unit, we no longer put up a big Christmas tree. We have a small ceramic one a dear friend made years ago. I gave it to my mother when she decided it was time to downsize her decorations. Since she passed, and we are now in similar circumstances, we inherited the gift.
Our seniors had an outing to a nearby church where their entire social hall was filled with about 50 artificial Christmas trees, each with a unique theme and decorated by various community organizations. I spent a good while taking pictures of them. Such creativity! So, I will close with one of those pictures, and an original poem I penned about 20 years ago!
From cold woods
bleak and bare,
Now stately she stands,
Silent
Bedecked with gold
and silver,
Shiny stars and baubles,
lights that glow
and bubble,
draws us near
her audience of admirers.
Beauty queen
Evergreen.
No monarch looked so regal.
Their raiment
and jeweled crowns
could not contend
with your
Christmas finery.
Her coronation
enthrones her
in the warmth
of heart and hearth
to reign among
our memories
of forest deep
and Christmases past.
What are some of your favorite trees? How do you benefit from forests and jungles? Do you respect a tree? If you took a picture of one, what angle would you take? What story would your photo tell?
