Palm trees, hibiscus, bamboo and pistachio tree. Remove them from this scene and what would you have? Trees are both the life and the decorations of our world. They soften harsh edges as well as some of the ugliness of our world. They give us breath, shade and shelter, food and some of the sweetness of life. They provide homes for birds and other animals and a foundation for our westward expansion.
But most of all, for me, they give a place for my eyes to rest upon that assures me that whatever ills men may promulgate upon other men, that nature remains constant. It is not that it does not change, but within the larger cycle, all is constant, as it is in our human cycle. What we see as good and evil take their turns in ascendancy, but still, we return at some part of this cycle to the norm. The success of our lives has to do with how hard we work to maintain the norm in our own lives, in spite of what is happening in the larger cycles.
This is what I think of when I look at trees. For fourteen years, I lived surrounded by Redwood Trees. They were there before I was born and will hopefully be there after I die. Taller and older than us, if they had a consciousness, they could see the larger picture. Our world is a living thing that regards us as a symbiotic partner or a bothersome pest. It is up to us which we become.
A trellis covered with Thunbergias and bougainvillea give me my privacy from my neighbors, whose house is built much higher in the air than my own.
