Festival of Trees #15: a Collector's Delight

Welcome to the Festival of the Trees #15.
Thank you everyone for sending those links and articles. I received scads of excellent contributions - enough to make a large collection that should have something for everyone. So, let's jump right in:

Anyone who has been around the Festival of Trees for awhile will recognize Daniel Mosquin, head poobah at the University of British Columbia's Botany Photo of the Day. That's one of Daniel's beautiful photos, above, a Mimosa monancistra. Daniel constantly delights me with his beautiful photos taken in the botanical gardens as well as on his travels. I can't imagine hosting a FOTT without giving Daniel a plug. So thanks, Daniel for all the time and effort you put into BPOTD. His site also features work by other photogs, especially by members of the BPOTD flickr group. Daniel also includes with every day's photo, either a link to a photographic website or to a botany web link. Always educational ... often hugely entertaining.

Woodworker Tim Carney, shares some fascinating stuff about Baobab trees at his blog, Shop Talk. The photo, above, is by Daniel Montesinos.

Jade Blackwater submitted several written pieces from the "Halo" short fiction writing contest. The short fiction pieces, posted at The Clarity of Night are:
The Clarity of Night: Entry #56 (a short story with trees and forests in its heart. Written by Helen Flatley, posted and hosted by Jason Evans of The Clarity of Night blog.) The Clarity of Night: Entry #49 (Another tree-story from the Halo contest) and The Clarity of Night: Entry #12 (Another contest entry - this one more poetry than prose, and also speaking to the trees.)

Nature is an Art Gallery (the photo, left, is just one of many) comes to us via Gerry Gomez Pearlberg at Global Swarming Honeybees (she has lots of info on bees, too) "Dawn: a glorious caterpillar descends from a tree, with twinkling trees in the background ..."

Stuart Forsyth, of The Thought Menagerie, was in a frustrated mood one day so he decided to head outside and shoot some tree photos.

Stuart writes, "there is nothing like doing something you love to change your mood and feelings." A second contribution from Stuart, along with more awesome pics like this cork tree, is A Walk in the Park.

Wren, of the illustrious and beautiful blog, Wrenaissance Reflections always seems to have something there to entertain and educate us. Check out her recent Wrendition on trees, Treelimma, in which this bird-lover and tree-lover explores her ambiguity about keeping (or not) the mature Bradford Pears in her garden.

I know Wren thinks alot about creating habitat for birds on her property. How many of you take birds and other wildlife into consideration when planning your garden or landscape? There are so many conservation and ecology programs that encourage us to plant more trees or preserve existing trees and to make our home landscapes more inviting to a diversity of plants and animals. It's hard to know where to start pointing out the good ones! Mary Jo Manzanares of The Seattle Traveler, presents Backyard Sanctuary Program Helps Keep Washington one of the Best Places to Live.

Bat Cave, Swamp Style comes to the Festival courtesy of Swamp Things blog. Check out the gorgeous bald cypress (above) posted with that article! I have always loved the "knees" of the bald cypress for their resemblance to elderly folks, gnomes and little people.



"Wollemia nobilis" © Ontario Wanderer
Dean Gugler is one of the contributors at Whorled Leaves, an online reading group on nature books. Dean shared his interest in their current book, "The Tree" by Colin tudge, by elaborating on the natural history of the rare Wollemia ""Pine: Wollemia nobilis. Dean relates,

"Although we have found the book fairly heavy for summer reading it has sparked interest in trees in general."

photo ©Fleur-Ange Lamothe
Dean's partner, Fleur-Ange Lamothe is a painter/photographer artist in her own right (that's her photo, just above.) I introduced my friend Fleur-Ange in this blog post with some of my favorite tree photos of hers.

Our very own Dave Bonta, coordinator of the Festival of Trees and blogger at Via Negativa, shares a wonderful post titled, New Life from and Old Chestnut (that's his beautiful photo, left.) Dave also writes, along with another submission on Giant Trees, that "Most Americans would probably be shocked to hear that their redwoods and sequoias aren't quite the largest trees in the world."

I love the way Jarrett writes at his blog, Creature of the Shade. This time Jarrett sent us Southern Flora, Northern Word where he muses on the names of Australian trees. "However acclimated I become, I'll probably never shake the first impression that Australian plants and animals seem designed to mislead the northerner. Anything remotely conifer-like is called a pine. (And the) eucalypts were called ash, boxwood, and even apple."

We have a new Tree-Festivalee, Larry, from Wandering Around Kansas. Welcome, Larry! His contribution is an excellent photo, The Shade Tree. It's still summer in the northern hemisphere (just barely) and, well -- if it's hot where you live, I expect you're still appreciating the shade under trees like the oak in Larry's photo.

American Forests, a conservation group that has been protecting forests and their denizens for over 20 years, has a page of e-cards you can send to friends. Check out their postcards of "champion trees" like the ancient white pine, above. Then head over to their Historic Tree Nursery and dream of planting a piece of history near your own home.

Silver Valley Girl presents Still Life of My Tree posted at Silver Valley Stories. Her post illustrates a great idea: to document one tree you really care about, through the seasons. Still Life of My Tree shows views of the same tri-color beech through seven months so far. The photo, left, shows her beech in July.

Karen Bastille sent in one of my favorite submissions this month, Nurturing The Bond Between Child And Tree. Karen wrote on her blog, At Home With Grandmother Wren, that "we can encourage our children’s relationship with trees and the natural world around them while at the same time renewing our own awareness of its blessings."

Karen includes links for more ideas for teaching children about nature, and ideas she used with her granddaughter who has grown to love the nectarine tree her Grampy planted when she was born.

Finally, I'd like to point you to two more collections on Raven's Nest. This Festival#15 post was getting way too long, but I couldn't bear to leave out a few of my favorite sites about trees in art and literature. If you have the time, I think these two Festival-specific blog posts will be entertaining and elucidating. I apologize for any overlap between these posts and the links above.

Trees in Art

Trees in Poetry and Prose

Well, folks, that concludes September's edition of Festival of the Trees. The next edition of the Festival will appear at trees, if you please. Send your tree-related submissions to festival (dot) trees (at) gmail (dot) com no later than September 28th. Or if you wish, you can submit your blog article to the next edition of Festival of the Trees using our handy-dandy carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Thank you to everyone who participated in Festival#15
your host, Maureen Shaughnessy