Poui Blossoms: Weekly Photo Challenge – Evanescent

“This challenge is wide open. Evanescent can be any fleeting moment in time.

ev·a·nes·cent [evəˈnes(ə)nt]
adjective

1. Soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing.”

If I could choose a personal totem, it would be the yellow poui tree. Have I said this before? When it isn’t in bloom, it isn’t a particularly noticeable tree. But in poui season, for a few days, the tree erupts into a mass of bright yellow blossoms!Blossoms…like sunlight captured by the tree!Then they fall…and are gone….

Quickly fading or disappearing. But magnificent for the short time they are here!

Weekly Photo Challenge – Evanescent

Leafy Green: Weekly Photo Challenge – Green

“Sometimes it’s fun to take a step back from interpretive challenges and just celebrate a color: green!”

Perhaps, like me, this week’s challenge reminded you of Kermit the Frog singing:

It’s not that easy being green;

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.

Leaves…(breadfruit tree)……leaves…(lychee tree)……and more leaves…(ackee tree)!

Weekly Photo Challenge – Green

River Sunrise

A windblown leaf chases round and round a chair leg, like a playful mouse. I put a towel on the iron patio chair before sitting down. It is much colder in this Wisconsin river valley than on my roof at home. Mist hangs over the water, as the sun burnishes the riverside trees. As the steam rises from my cup of tea. As I listen to a crow cawing in a leafless tree nearby. The bright yellow down near the river bank is an autumn tree; it reminds me of my garden’s pouis. Sunlight stored in blossoms and leaves spilling out in profusion, drawing my attention. It isn’t home. But it reminds me…there’s sunrise everywhere.

An Almond Tree By The Sea

An almond tree (Terminalia catappa) is probably one of the first trees I learned to identify…from the large leaves and the oval shaped fruit. As a child, I loved to eat the flesh on the outside when the fruit was ripe and to bite into the fibrous husk and suck the sour juice from it. I experienced many smashed fingers while cracking open the husks with large stones to get the nuts inside.

Almond trees often grow near the sea. Even on a cliff face sometimes.Red leaves falling into the sea and drifting on the gentle current……viewed by a couple of small fish….Bright colours. Blue sky. Blue sea.Almond tree.

 

Tree Knots

There is something fascinating about knots on trees, imperfections that can form quite routinely around the spots where branches fall away as a tree grows. Notable rough spots, signifying growth. At other times, knots form as a result of something more dramatic, when limbs are torn from a tree during a hurricane, for example. Over many years, the tree can grow around the torn off stump and the wood inside can rot, leaving a hole in the trunk. So many metaphors suggesting the passage of time and self-protective actions, but I will resist & simply share some photos.

Ylang-ylang

Poinciana

Water oak

Poor Man’s Orchid

Julie MangoKnot:  A knob, protuberance, or node in a stem, branch, or root.

            A hard mass formed in a tree trunk at the intersection with a branch, resulting in a round cross-grained piece in timber when cut through.