High in the Hawthorn Tree

Today, I stay at home all day.  My Friday work projects include: improving the sunny garden, mowing and weeding in the front lawn, and watering.  I also plan to walk 4 miles and practice Tai Chi Chuan, cane, and the Five Animal Frolics Qigong.  Mostly reading Eastern philosophy and mind/body arts books.  Listening to lots of Ben Leinbach and Jai Uttal.  

I plan to move a hawthorn tree given to me by Cathy Goodin from a large pot to a permanent location in the garden.  The small tree was kind of ragged when we first got the plant, but pruning and good watering have now resulted a nice specimen. 

"Oh! come to see me, when the soft warm May
Bids all my boughs their gay embroidery wear,
In my bright season's transitory day,
While my young perfume loads the enamoured air.
Oh, come to see me, when the sky is blue,
And backs my spangles with an azure ground.
While the thick ivy bosses clustering through,
See their dark tufts with silvery circlets crowned.
Then be the Spring in all its pomp arrayed,
the lilac's blossom, the laburnum's blaze,
Nature hath reared beyond this Hawthorn glade
No fairer alter to her Maker's praise."
-  George W.F. Howard, On a Hawthorn Tree, 1864

Lore of the Hawthorn Tree

Hawthorn Tree Mystic Lore

"Across the shimmering meadows--

Ah, when he came to me!

In the spring-time,

In the night-time,

In the starlight,

Beneath the hawthorn tree.

 

Up from the misty marsh-land--

Ah, when he climbed to me!

To my white bower,

To my sweet rest,

To my warm breast,

Beneath the hawthorn tree.

 

Ask of me what the birds sang,

High in the hawthorn tree;

What the breeze tells,

What the rose smells,

What the stars shine--

Not what he said to me!"
-  Willa Cather, The Hawthorn Tree, 1947 

May: Quotes, Poetry, Lore