. . . Fool! Never can'st thou grasp this fleeting gleam,

           Its glowing flame would die if it were caught,

          Its value is that it doth always seem

           But just a little farther on. Distraught,

           But lighted ever onward, we are brought

          Upon our way unknowing, in a dream.

~ Excerpt from “The Lamp of Life,” by Amy Lowell

 Sun through the trees, no rain. I am out early. Listening to a Fresh Air interview with the author of “Finding the Mother Tree,” by Suzanne Simard. The memoir sounds fascinating. I will listen to the book on audible. Everything going on around me is about the trees. Here, these maple wings, and the sun shining through them, a lamp. And, along the trail, by the railroad tracks, I find the tiny milkweed plants coming up. Up the hill, the steep hill, a birch tree has fallen across the path. Stitches. It’s time to go home. I teach a webinar for high schoolers on writing from photos. They are masked in the classroom. It’s hard to tell if they are engaged, but there are a few comments. In the afternoon, I splurge myself with things to plant: juniper bushes and hydrangea, a lilac tree, a plum tree sapling. I plant the day lilies I bought a week ago. And I rake a spot on the driveway I’m trying to clear to plant the trees. I am just so happy to be out in the sunshine, planting. It’s May.

In her new book, [Finding the Mother Tree] Suzanne Simard contends that at the center of a healthy forest stands a Mother Tree: an old-growth matriarch that acts as a hub of nutrients shared by trees of different ages and species linked together via a vast underground fungal network.Credit...

~The New York Times