The Octopus Tree

The Octopus Tree

  With all their gnarly-ness, twisty branches and intricate bark, Live Oaks are one of the most interesting and plentiful of the trees in our neighborhood on the South Carolina coast. Two very old ones, home to many birds and squirrels, fill my view as I drink my tea in the sunroom every morning. 

  And on one of the trails we frequent along the ocean is a Live Oak so interesting and loved, it has a name.  

The Octopus Tree is a living sculpture.  The sculptor — a hurricane!

Everything in the photo above is ONE tree. 

  As you can see, you hike through thick forest all around and suddenly the trail opens up and goes right through this tangle of tree, the tentacles of the octopus.

Here’s how it happens. 

  Children love to chase each other in and out and over the branches of the Octopus Tree. I confess I usually call a rest here and use one for a seat with a backrest. It’s easy to close one’s eyes and summon up Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, a party of cavorting tree fairies.

  At the center back, slightly left, of the photo you can see the trail continuing on, reentering the thick forest of pine, wax myrtle, and other shrubs. 

  Live oaks live for several hundred years and grow tremendous trunk girths. They shed and grow new leaves year around, hence their name. Their wood is very strong and until the 1860s, the US Navy used it to build its warships.

Sorry, I Needed a Break

Sorry, I Needed a Break 

  I think it’s called ghosting these days, and honest — I didn’t mean to do that! 

It’s just that recent journeys and adventures have been inward, physical, and nothing others would find that entertaining. 

  We had the most wonderful, unusual, long spring, much cooler than normal, when we should have been out traveling, hiking, camping, etc.  But no. Instead, for months every week it was a steady round of disappointing doctors’ appointments, tests and procedures, repairmen in, under, and over our home (with accompanying large bills), rush trips to Florida to assist my mom, sad events for my children, 

                 and, well … you know … stuff.

  Perspective, along with my sense of humor, dwindled to myopic, and with them 

          P.O.O.F.,

               away went my desire to write.  

But hey, as my mom always said: It could be worse! Most of the house repairs are finished and we have finally gotten the right doctors with some answers. We are both doing physical therapy and staying hopeful about avoiding the more drastic options.  The Writer is writing (tv/movie script), I am drawing/painting/knitting, Frank is franking and Bob is bobbing, and life goes on! 

Hope all is well with you and you are still speaking to me. 😊

Sending love and light . . . .  

Summertime, South Carolina