Trees of my acquaintance.

I was (and am) so tempted to call this writing "My buds." But look--I'm not going to.

Today: day #3 of the sit-an-hour, wander-an-hour plan. I undertook three writing bouts; I produced 1013 words. The extra part of the program, about which I didn't tell you, is that I figure out ahead of time what my reward will be. Yesterday's proposed reward was to go to town and buy tulips at the market, but the florist wasn't in the market: it was Sunday, and on Sundays the market square becomes a territory foreign to me, all my landmarks replaced by things for which I have no use. And because it was Mothering Sunday, all the nice cut flowers at the Marks & Spencer grocery were gone, as well, though there were some vaguely droopy ones left.

This simply meant that yesterday's reward carried over to today (while yesterday's reward became a wheel of goat cheese exquisitely sized to fit in the palm of my hand): between bouts #1 and #2, I strode off to town to get my tulips. I came away with four bunches, two yellow, one orange-yellow, and one Mystery--not unlike the good ol' Mystery Flavor™ Dum-Dum Pops™. (Yeah, you're going to thank me for that later.) I still don't know what the Mystery tulips will look like when they open. I'm curious enough that I almost turned my Anglepoise desk lamp on them earlier, hoping that the heat of its bulb would encourage these curly feathery yellow-and-red-and-green petals to ease open. But look--I didn't. Not least because it wouldn't have worked.

With an impulse-bought half-pound of espresso from the local coffee mavens, I turned for home and had yet another encounter with the willow at Trinity Bridge.

Which brings me to tonight's title. I have been here long enough now to have some favorite trees, all of which are favorites for different reasons. Today I picked up a new one, the flowering tree in our Fellows Garden (where we're all asked to keep to the footpaths, alas, so that, out of respect, I settled for less than I wanted, photographically speaking).


There's the enormous beech beside Clare--which, I will admit, I strode right under without seeing today, so intent was I on thinking about the river, and the flowering tree on the other side of Clare, and my tulips. There's the great beech whose edges (now tipped in red, pushing toward leaves) I watch from my desk all day long, as I figure out which words come next.


And there's the willow beside Trinity Bridge, which I watched lose its leaves in November and am watching get its new ones now. You tell me that this tree wouldn't make you want to stop and pay it some mind whenever you saw it.


Those long, slim things hanging out there with the leaves? Those are flower clusters, called catkins. I walked home this afternoon wondering whether the willows will be in trouble if bees die out here as well. But now I find that catkins are, by definition, anemophilous, the best word I've learned today, even better than the one I'm saving to use as the title of a post tomorrow (or some other time). Anemophily is simply pollination by wind rather than by insects or other animals. Literally, anemophily is love of wind. And literally, then, I too am an anemophile--especially when the wind in my vicinity is giving me a way to dance with one of my favorite trees for the first time this season.

Today: 1013 words (for 4258 total) (plus a starting place and plan for tomorrow).