Category: A Daily Tree

What you see is not so much a single tree as a collection.
I went to town, over the river and through the woods. This is the road.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

A year’s worth of trees. More or less.
I was with Arthur visiting his brother, my other uncle, Alan, in Colorado. I found myself struck by the stark trees in the snowscape there, and decided to take pictures of trees.
Without regret, I present a tree, one year on.

I suppose some readers of this here blog thingy™ will feel that it’s a bit tedious and definitely lazy, all these trees. Where is the idiosyncratic, random content of old?
It still crops up, I guess. The character of the blog has evolved, over the years, there’s no denying. It’s more anodyne, now, in some respects. I’m sorry. I have come to appreciate the daily poems and trees as a way to ensure I get something posted every day, even when I’m uninspired. I lean on them as habits, to force a communication with a world that I otherwise would quickly neglect. Which is a way to say, “Sorry if the trees are boring, but they’re better than nothing at all, right?”
Have a happy new year.
[daily log: walking, 1km]

The last several weeks have been preternaturally warm, considering. It’s been in the mid to high 40’s (F) the last week or so. Plenty of rain, but that temperature range could be summer here.
This tree was trying to hide behind the broken, decaying body of its deceased elder.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Behold, another tree was there to be seen.

I will make the observation that when the power goes out (not uncommon in this corner of Alaska), I take more walks. So hopefully once a day.
[daily log: walking, 4km]

I walked over to Mike and Penny’s for Xmas dinner. They are my closest neighbors, about 3/4 of a mile down the road. They have been generous and kind to Arthur over the years and to me since my arrival here.
I saw this tree in their living room. It is fake. But very Christmassy.

Earlier I made cookies to take and share with them.

Arthur is down in California with Juli, Keith, Jenna, Braden – for Christmas – as I was last year.
Juli sent me this picture. Arthur is a “snowbird” – a retiree who goes somewhere warm in the winter.

[daily log: walking, 4km]

A tree for December.

Last night I went to Jeri and Karl’s for dinner. They’re down the road a ways further, around 10 mile. They are retirees, Arthur’s age. The have cats and black labrador. I enjoy the pets. I probably talked too much.
[daily log: walking, 3km]

I went into town today. With just me, and not Arthur here, going in on Thursday isn’t necessary – he goes on Thursday for the Senior Discounts. I decided to go on Friday. Also, I didn’t actually need many groceries – I am eating more in my bachelor style: I just made a big pot of rice and beans and have that every day for lunch. I have salads for dinner. I don’t run out of food as fast, when it’s just me.
I didn’t take a picture of a tree. Here is a tree from when I was at Juli and Keith’s in Oregon, over Thanksgiving.

[daily log: walking, 3km]

I worked outside during a break in the rain. Perhaps that means I’m feeling better.
I saw this tree. Go figure.

[daily log: walking, 2km; shoveling, 1.5hr]

I think I finally turned the corner on this flu-thing that hit me hard after getting back here. I’ve been using it as an excuse (I think a valid one) to not yet start some projects I’ve had in mind now that I’m back home, including updating my interaction with the school district (in hopes I can move up the potential substitute list). I coughed and sneezed less this evening than previous recent days. Knock on wood.
For example, this tree is made of wood.

NOTE: The last day or two, my blog site has been under a pretty intense, sustained effort to hack. So far it seems to be resisting, though the blog’s automated emailer has been spamming my email inbox with notifications of failed logins and junky comments (100’s to 1000’s per hour). This all may impact the performance of the blog. I am trying a few different security measures to tackle the problem, but I’m not very experienced with this. If the blog disappears for a while, please don’t be alarmed – I’ve created a full back-up, and worst case, I’ll take it down and rebuild it at some point. Thank you for your patience.
[daily log: walking, 3km]

Do you get tired of trees? I don’t. I find solace in them, and company. It’d be nice if my life was more interesting. What am I doing? I’m still sick with my never-ending flu-thing. But it seems to be getting better. I have been cleaning and rearranging the attic – that’s a big job. I have been doing some work cleaning up my server, too. Trying to consolidate things so I can start a new project, there. I’m staying busy.

To supplement the tree, here is the hill across the inlet.

To supplement the hill, here is a fleet of some ducks disturbing the still water – mostly you can see their wakes.

[daily log: walking, 4km]

It was a busy day of getting water restarted, cleaning things up, getting resettled. Not helpful that my head-cold, seemingly on the mend, reasserted itself. Of course, I could attribute that to the airplane – there’s a strong correlation in my experience between head-cold symptoms and airplane travel.
Well anyway here I am. I didn’t take a picture of a tree, exactly. Here is Sunnahae at dawn – it has trees.

[daily log: walking, 3km]

I was traveling all day. I don’t have a tree picture. But I took this picture of boats in Ketchikan. Maybe there’s a tree in the far distance to the right behind the boats you could select? Or imagine the masts of the boats are trees.

[daily log: walking: 6km]

This is a tree up at the tree farm.

Today, we went to the VA hospital again with Arthur. This time, it was a one-year follow-up with the polytrauma team. They lauded his recovery, but expressed concern about the possibility of ongoing “mini strokes” as some post-accident MRI’s seem to indicate – but VA internal documentation doesn’t seem well enough organized for them to be sure what’s going on (problems in communication between “Alaska division” and “Portland division”, etc.). Arthur remains quite resistant to even the idea of the initial stroke, much less the idea of mini-strokes that don’t necessarily feel like or seem like what we normally think of as a stroke. So it all seems like just talk, at some level, if it’s not going to impact behavior or self-concept.
For dinner I went to my cousin’s son’s pub in Forest Grove and talked with my cousin and her husband for a few hours – mostly about what it means when one’s elders become senescent and you have to deal with that.
[daily log: walking, 2km]