Originally posted October 31, 2010
Piglet said, in the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh anyway, maybe even in the real version, “I don’t mind the leaves that are leaving; it’s the leaves that are coming….” He was raking on a rather blustery day. Today is a blustery day and my garden is full of leaves from the Maple and Birch, that crowd out the Apple and Cherry, which keep their leaves into November. I love trees and now there is a tree calendar available from Toronto Parks and Trees – here is the link.
http://www.torontoparksandtrees.org/portraits.htm
The great thing about this calendar is that there is a poem about a tree or trees to go with every picture.
I am connected to a lot of knitting designers on Facebook. I am obviously not connected to a lot of gardeners or poets, because no one posted that a poem about Trees by George Cooper is one of the most loved pieces of verse circulating on the internet today! Another link
http://edhelper.com/poetry/Octobers_Party_by_George_Cooper.htm
George Cooper wasn’t a great poet like, T.S. Eliot – there is a certain common denominator effect on the internet – but I would read this poem to a child and enjoy it. It is not, by the way, in the Oxford Book of Poetry for Children, but “Loveliest of Trees” is.
I have brewing in my mind a design for a shawl inspired by the poem “Loveliest of Trees” by A. E. Housman. It’s the last lines of the poem that are haunting:
| And since to look at things in bloom | |
| Fifty springs are little room, | |
| About the woodlands I will go | |
| To see the cherry hung with snow. |
One of the first lace projects I designed after “Snowy Evening” from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” was Tree Scarf. I wanted to capture the idea of a tree in lace. The main pattern repeat is the bark and I chose the Bird’s Eye pattern in the ruffle at the beginning and end of the scarf, as I said in Wildflowers and Lace:
……I decided on Bird’s Eye because it’s an old Shetland lace pattern and trees are old. Birds nest in trees. Plus the openness of the design could look both like the leaves and debris that collect at the bottom of the tree as well as those leaves and branches that form the top expanse of the tree…..
I have added the tree calendar to my Christmas list. Time, I think, to go for a walk in one of Toronto’s amazing ravines for the tree canopy.
Dinner to-night? Something with Maple syrup. Here’s a link to a Maple Syrup site with a lot of recipes. They list several recipes per page. I was thinking of the second one down – pork tenderloin; but you could do French Toast or pancakes too. Ymmmmm!