Almond Tree Quotes

I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.

Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?

You cannot go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new ending

When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. 'What vanity,' they screamed, 'what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!' The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. 'Forgive me, my sisters,' said the tree. 'I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.

Hatred is self-punishment. Do you think they're feeling bad because you hate them?

Good things make choosing difficult.Bad things leave no choice

Success is not about never falling, but about rising every time you fall

I sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems.

Courage, I realised, was not the absence of fear: it was the absence of selfishness; putting someone else's interest before one's own.

He who aims too high will get a sore neck

Many great men can attribute their success to the fact that they didn't have the advantages other men had

Look at all the life in this," she said. "Every pip could become a tree, and every tree could bear another hundred fruits and every fruit could bear another hundred trees. And so on to infinity." I picked the picks from my tongue with my fingers. "Just imagine," she said. "If every seed grew, there'd be no room in the world for anything but pomegranate trees.

People hate out of fear and ignorance. If they could just get to know the people they hate, and focus on their common interests, they could overcome that hatred.

I want to know everything. I want to know how the clouds move and why islands fall into the sea. I want to know how to plant almond trees and how to make children grow up straight and healthy. I want to know how princes should govern and why people love. I want to understand the stars in the heavens and all the words that were ever made. I want to remember every story that was ever told.

Before you judge a person, try to imagine how you would feel if the same things had happened to you.

The world should have stopped, but it didn't.

The plants in the garden - the aloes, the almond tree, the rose tree and the iris - were afraid of her. The flowers withered under her breath and the touch of her hand was leprous for the leaves. The plants whose growth is belief, whose breathing is hope, whose immobility is confidence and whose calyx is prayer, the plants who kept watch into the night, hated this women with the secret force of stars.

Don't allow guilt to enter your heart, because it's a disease, like cancer, that'll eat away at you until there's nothing left.

I had no idea words could have so much power and beauty.

Permission to buy apricots and oranges from my own trees, the ones my great grandfather planted and i kept alive in drought and war

Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line? Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.

I wanted to describe to him how the emotional intimacy growing between us was shattering my heart in the most life-affirming ways, but I didn’t have the right words, except to say that I loved him, which wasn’t nearly enough. We spent that night, and every night together after, in a closeness I had never known, or even thought possible with another person. I was happy. Truly content. Drifting to sleep in Bilal’s arms, I thought about the hills beyond the terrace. Soon wild plum, peach, pear, fig, medlar, mulberry, date, and almond trees would bloom.

He looked me directly in the eye. 'So you live in America?' 'We do.' I smiled. He stopped, opened his backpack, pulled out an empty tear gas grenade and handed it to me. 'I believe it was a present from your country.' Majid smiled. 'Tell your friends thanks. We got their grenade.

The almond blossom from the tree has gone, to be replaced by new green shoots. It smells of spring, and mown grass, and tilled earth from the fields beyond. Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness.

The only certainty was that they took everything with them: money, December breezes, the bread knife, thunder at 3 in the afternoon, the scent of jasmines, love. All that remained were the dusty almond trees, the reverberating streets, the houses of wood and roofs of rusting tin with their taciturn inhabitants, devastated by memories.

Only fools fail to recognize you, knowing no sleep but the shadow which you, taking pity, cast over us in the twilight before true night. They do not taste you in the golden flood of grapes, in the magic oil of the almond tree and the brown juice of the poppy. They do not know that it is you who hovers over a tender maiden’s bosom, making a heaven of her lap − never suspect that it is you who comes to them out of old stories, opening the doors to heaven and carrying the key to the dwellings of the blessed, a silent messenger of infinite mysteries.

At first he told them that everything was just the same, that the pink snails were still in the house where he had been born, that the dry herring still had the same taste on a piece of toast, that the waterfalls in the village still took on a perfumed smell at dusk. They were the notebook pages again, woven with the purple scribbling, in which he dedicated a special paragraph to each one. Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught then about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

Throughout history the conquerors have always treated the conquered this way. The bad ones need to believe we're inferior to justify the way they treat us. If they only could realize that we're all the same.

Prologue Flying 1 The almond tree knows before all the other trees The almond tree knows that Spring is coming before all the other trees The almond tree knows that Spring is coming so well it blossoms in the winter

It was close to the end of Shebat, when the almond trees blossomed. The wakeful tree, we called it. Midway down the hill, I smelled its rich brown scent, and winding farther, I came upon the tree itself, its canopy lush with white flowers.

Success is not about never failing, but about rising every time you fall.

So when I feel most lost I choose to remember those things that help me survive. I choose love.

(And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, laurel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir...)

THERE CAN BE FEW delights in the world as pleasant as a Siracusan spring. The fragrance of the lemon, orange, apricot, almond and peach blossoms pervade the city, enriched by the moist, salty sea breezes. On

I’ll emerge, with wings, from the banner I am, bird that never alights on trees in the garden— I will shed my skin and my language. Some of my words of love will fall into Lorca’s poems; he’ll live in my bedroom and see what I have seen of the Bedouin moon. I’ll emerge from almond trees like cotton on sea foam

One cannot live on anger, my son.

And it suddenly occured to me that maybe peace was possible.

Good things make choosing difficult. Bad things leave no choice. [p. 62]

You cannot go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new ending. [p. 115]

life isn't about what happens to you, but about you choose to react to it

Well, Queen Orianna, back home I was like an almond tree growing in an orchard of apples. But here…everybody is nuts!

I wanted to crunch flowering almond trees, and take bites out of the rainbow nougat of the sunset.

She’d bought a blue notebook in the pharmacy to write down her aunt’s remedies. Star tulip to understand dreams, bee balm for a restful sleep, black mustard seed to repel nightmares, remedies that used essential oils of almond or apricot or myrrh from thorn trees in the desert. Two eggs, which must never be eaten, set under a bed to clean a tainted atmosphere. Vinegar as a cleansing bath. Garlic, salt, and rosemary, the ancient spell to cast away evil.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!

When I was grown up I wanted to crunch flowering almond trees, and take bites out of the the rainbow nougats of the sunset. Against the night sky of New York, the neon signs appeared to me like giant sweatmeats

I have always enjoyed this part of the journey the most - the passing through of places where one would never wish to stay but that hold a strange, eerie beauty all of their own. There, with the heavens open wide above, streaked with silent stars and constellations, so vast and beautiful, then I would feel that our journey was not purposeless after all.

I still dream in pictures and color, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents' faces, which will never grow any older. "But it is strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling." The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman's apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.

The hardest part for us was watching them harvest our Shamouti oranges.Those were our favourites, thick skinned, seedless and juicy.When the wind was strong, the scent of their blossoms in the spring and their fruit in the summer still reached us.

The little girl dipped her pipette in the water, then held it up to the lightbulb dangling over the table. In the liquid drop that was slowly stretching, she had captured the entire room: the window and its four panes with the waning daylight, the chest covered with a red rug, the sink with the handle of a saucepan poking out, the big photo tacked to the wall showing an almond tree bowed under a storm, its blossoms torn off, blown away, tiny angel flights or sacrificed lives. 'The world's tiny... it's a pity we can't keep droplets for all the beautiful things we see. And for people. I'd love that. I'd put them in...' Zaide broke off, shaking her head. 'No. You can't put them anywhere. But it's beautiful.' I whispered, 'Yes, the world is beautiful.

Water problems in the western United States, when viewed from afar, can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: all we need to do is turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers.

Twice in this book Thich Nhat Hanh puts before us a powerful image of Christian legend: In midwinter, St. Francis is calling out to an almond tree, “Speak to me of God!” and the almond tree breaks into bloom. It comes alive. There is no other way of witnessing to God but by aliveness. With a fine instinct, Thich Nhat Hanh traces genuine aliveness to its source. He recognizes that this is what the biblical tradition calls the Holy Spirit. After all, the very word “spirit” means “breath,” and to breathe means to live. The Holy Spirit is the breath of divine life. —Brother David Steindl-Rast

Wasn't there any balance in the world?

This was something they could not take from us - the freedom to imagine, to create new worlds beyond this one.

This is where my father once instructed me,” said Skanda, pointing to a familiar row of now desiccated neem, sweet-almond and fig trees. Scolded, more like. I resisted the urge to laugh.

my issue with what they consider beautiful is their concept of beauty centers around excluding people i find hair beautiful when a woman wears it like a garden on her skin that is the definition of beauty big hooked noses pointing upward to the sky like they’re rising to the occasion skin the color of earth my ancestors planted crops on to feed a lineage of women with thighs thick as tree trunks eyes like almonds deeply hooded with conviction the rivers of punjab flow through my bloodstream so don’t tell me my women aren’t as beautiful as the ones in your country

A lemon tree was nearly universal; other trees varied with climate - almond trees in Adelaide and Perth, plums and apples in Melbourne, choke vines and bananas in Sydney and Brisbane, a mango in Cairns, figs and loquats everywhere. For a few weeks, there was a gross overabundance of fruit and much trading ('I'll take some of your plums if you take some of my apples next month').

Beaumont's intention was to promote the virtue and nutritional value of fruit-bearing trees. Fifteen different genera of fruit and a number of their different species are described in the work: almonds, apricots, a barberry, cherries, quinces, figs, strawberries, gooseberries, apples, a mulberry, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, and raspberries. Each colored plate illustrates the plant's seed, foliage, blossom, fruit, and sometimes cross sections of the species.

Hephaestus told Phyllis that she owed her name to the lovely girl whom Acamas left behind in Thrace after the Trojan War, promising to return.The poor girl waited in vain & out of desparation, hanged herself.The Goddess Nemesis took pity on the girl & turned her into a leafless almond tree.When Acamas at last returned,he was overcome with grief & embraced the tree which immediately sprouted green leaves, which gave the Greeks their word "phylla" meaning "green leaves" & all the botanists of the world their "phylla" words.Hephaestus also said that Vicky stood for Victory[Nike].[MMT]

Letter from Town: The Almond Tree" You promised to send me some violets. Did you forget? White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge? Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge Of our early love that hardly has opened yet. Here there’s an almond tree—you have never seen Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street, and I stand Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean. Under the almond tree, the happy lands Provence, Japan, and Italy repose, And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands. You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown, All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter Startled upon your eyes now so wide with hereafter, You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down.

Letter from Town: The Almond Tree" You promised to send me some violets. Did you forget? White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge? Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge Of our early love that hardly has opened yet. Here there’s an almond tree—you have never seen Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street, and I stand Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean. Under the almond tree, the happy lands Provence, Japan, and Italy repose, And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands. You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown, All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter Startled upon your eyes now so wide with hereafter, You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down.

Lorca’s Spain: A Homage” Beginning with olive trees. Shadows. Beginning with roosters. Crystal. Beginning with castanets & almonds. Fishes. This is a homage to Spain. This mists dogs. This silences rubber. This is Saturn. Beginning with yellow. Eclipse. Beginning with needles. Insomnia. Beginning with baskets. The Moon. Who is naked? The imagination (wrote Lorca) is seared. This is a homage to water. Beginning & end.

When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. Filling pages and people with inspiration. When my thoughts don't want to rest on a page, we argue. We argue that one merely is ready just too comfortable playing in The Nile [denial] river. So we compromise. We grow, water metaphors and plant simile trees of golden-almond manifested love dreams. Then at that moment, we forgot what we were arguing about. Beauty can do that for you. That's the beauty of writing.

Letters from home have come too, which I have not yet had the courage to read, I feel so melancholy. Please ask M. Aurier not to write any more articles on my painting, insist upon this, that to begin with he is mistaken about me, since I am too overwhelmed with grief to be able to face publicity. Making pictures distracts me, but if I hear them spoken of, it pains me more than he knows. How is Bernard? As there are some canvases in duplicate, if you like you can exchange with him, for a good canvas by him would be a fine thing to have in your collection. I felt ill at the time I was doing the almond blossoms. If I had been able to go on working, you can judge from it that I would have done others of trees in blossom. Now the trees in blossom are almost over, really I have no luck. Yes, I must try to get out of here, but where to go? I do not think I could be more shut up and more of a prisoner in the homes where they do not pretend to leave you free, such as at Charenton or Montevergues.

The flavor that came to me was a luscious Suncrest peach that I once had in California. This heirloom variety needed time to ripen on the tree to achieve its peak flavor. Unlike other peaches that were picked unripe so they would ship more easily. Suncrest peaches had to be eaten right away. But they were worth it- fragrant, luscious, juice-dripping-down-your-chin perfection. The problem was that I didn't have any peach mousse or filling. But I quickly improvised. "You're getting married in August, when peaches are in season," I said. "Taste our browned butter yellow cake with a little apricot and some vanilla-almond buttercream, and see what you think." As they each took a small bite of what I hoped would be their signature cake flavors, I was drawn back into the taste of the peach. It was juicy and sweet, but as I got close to the center of the peach, their was an off flavor of rot. In my mind's eye, I could see a darkened area close to the center that would soon cause the peach to wither. I knew what that meant. I didn't know whose life would be blighted, but these golden days were few. They wouldn't have much time together.

Out beyond and way back and further past that still. And such was it since. But after all appearances and some afternoons misspent it came to pass not all was done and over with. No, no. None shally shally on that here hill. Ah, but that was idle then and change was not an old hand. No, no. None shilly shilly on that here first rung. So, much girded and with new multitudes, a sun came purple and the hail turned in a year or two. And that was not all. No, no. None ganny ganny on that here moon loose. Turns were taken and time put in, so much heft and grimace, there, with callouses, all along the diagonal. Like no other time and the time taken back, that too like none other that can be compared to a bovine heap raising steam, or the eye-cast of a flailing comet. Back and forth, examining the egg spill and the cord fray and the clowning barnacle. And all day with no break to unwrap or unscrew or squint and flex or soak the brush. No, no. None flim flim on that here cavorting mainstay. From tree to tree and the pond there deepening and some small holes appearing and any number of cornstalks twisting into a thing far from corn. That being the case there was some wretched plotting, turned to stone, holding nothing. No, no. None rubby rubby on that here yardstick. Came then from the region of silt and aster, all along the horse trammel and fire velvet, first these sounds and then their makers. When passed betwixt and entered fully, pails were swung and notches considered. There was no light. No, none. None wzm wzm on that here piss crater. And it being the day, still considered. Oh, all things considered and not one mentioned, since all names had turned in and handed back. Knowing this the hounds disbanded and knowing that the ground muddled headstones and milestones and gallows and the almond-shaped buds of freshest honeysuckle. And among this chafing tumult fates were scrambled and mortality made untidy and pithy vows took themselves a breather. This being the way and irreversible homewards now was a lifted skeletal thing of the past, without due application or undue meaning. No, no. None shap shap on that here domicile shank. From right foot to left, first by the firs, then by the river, hung and loitered, and the blaze there slow to come. All night waking with no benefit of sleeping and the breath cranking and the heart-place levering and the kerosene pervading but failing to jerk a flame from out any one thing. No, none. None whoosh whoosh on that here burnished cunt. Oh, the earth, the earth and the women there, inside the simpering huts, stamped and spiritless, blowing on the coals. Not far away, but beyond the way of return.

Now focus. 17° 59' 0" North, 76° 44' 0" West. Down there is the Caribbean, though not the bits you might have seen in a pretty little brochure. We are beyond the aquamarine waters, with their slow manatees and graceful sea turtles, and beyond the beaches littered with sweet almonds. We have gone inland. Notice the hills, how one of them carries on its face a scar - a section where bulldozers and tractors have sunk their rusty talons into its cheeks, scraped away the brush and the trees and left behind a white crater of marl. The eyesore can be seen from ten or more miles away. To the people who live in this valley, it feels as if they wear the scar on their own skin - as if a kind of ruin has befallen them.

I keep an eye out for Ann, but instead I catch sight of a hedgehog shuffling into the undergrowth---an unexpected glimpse for they are shy, nocturnal creatures. Something about his gait, his spines, makes me imagine a sweet dish in his image. A hedgehog pudding... How might I make the spikes? Slithers of blanched almonds... impaled in a stiff white icing? Browned in a hot oven to re-create his russet color? And beneath his armor of icing and almonds... a Madeira sponge? A stiff blancmange? As I ponder how to make the hedgehog's body, I notice an apple tree, its boughs stripped of fruit but for a single split pippin at its apex. An apple hedgehog! A thick puree of apples drained until almost dry... with a center of apricot jam flavored with lemons.

Within it grew such a variety of plants as Elizabeth had ever seen: white roses, carnations, lobelias, mimosas, even sweet peas tumbling over each other in vigorous abandon. At one end was an herb garden, and Elizabeth recognized rue, fennel, caraway, sage, thyme and mint. Through a doorway at the rear of the courtyard she could see a grove of olive and lemon trees and on the short walk from the harbor to the house she had spotted tall, spiky thistle-like plants, palms and trees covered in white flowers. She was seized with an immediate desire to open her sketchbook and take out the magnifying glass from the pocket of her cloak, to capture the intricate detail of an almond blossom, its calyx and corolla, stamens and carpel, or perhaps to draw the curl of a vine tendril or a spiky aloe leaf

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

Recipes TOM PEPPER’S HOT BREW To soothe the throat or otherwise ease a long day. 1.4 drachm (1 tsp) local raw honey 16 drachm (1 oz) scotch or bourbon ½ pint (1 cup) hot water 3 sprigs fresh thyme Stir honey and bourbon at bottom of mug. Add hot water and thyme sprigs. Steep five minutes. Sip while warm. BLACKFRIARS BALM FOR BUGS AND BOILS To subdue angry, itchy skin caused by insect bites. 1 drachm (0.75 tsp) castor oil 1 drachm (0.75 tsp) almond oil 10 drops tea tree oil 5 drops lavender oil In a 2.7 drachm (10 ml) glass rollerball vial, add the 4 oils. Fill to top with water and secure cap. Shake well before each use. Apply to itchy, uncomfortable skin. ROSEMARY BUTTER BISCUIT COOKIES A traditional shortbread. Savory yet sweet, and in no way sinister. 1 sprig fresh rosemary 1 ½ cup butter, salted 2⁄3cup white sugar 2 ¾ cup all-purpose flour Remove leaves from rosemary and finely chop (approximately 1 Tbsp or to taste). Soften butter; blend well with sugar. Add rosemary and flour; mix well until dough comes together. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Form dough into 1.25-inch balls; press gently into pans until 0.5-inch thick. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake for 10–12 minutes, just until bottom edges are golden. Do not overbake. Cool at least 10 minutes. Makes 45 cookies.

they had never been apart, and there was nothing Evelyn could do about it but unwrap her Almond Joy candy bar and sit there for the duration. “The front yard had a great big old chinaberry tree. I remember, we’d pick those little chinaberries all year long, and at Christmas, we’d string them and wrap them all around the tree from top to bottom. Momma was always warning us not to put chinaberries up our nose, and of course the first thing Idgie did, as soon as she learned to walk, was to go out in the yard and put chinaberries up her nose and in her ears as well. To the point that Dr. Hadley had to be called! He told Momma, ‘Mrs. Threadgoode, it looks like you’ve got yourself a little scalawag on your hands.’ “Well, of course Buddy just loved to hear that. He encouraged her every step of the way. But that’s how it is in big families. Everybody has their favorite. Her real name was Imogene, but Buddy started calling her Idgie. Buddy was eight when she was born, and he used to carry her all over town, just like she was a doll. When she got old enough to walk, she’d paddle around after him like a little duck, dragging that little wooden rooster behind her. “That Buddy had a million-dollar personality, with those dark eyes and those white teeth…he could charm you within an inch of your life. I don’t know of a girl in Whistle

My mother had a passion for all fruit except oranges, which she refused to allow in the house. She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit and a recipe- Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake. Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengages that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer. At one time we had over a hundred trees (apples, pears, plums, gages, cherries, quinces), not to mention the raspberry canes and the fields of strawberries, gooseberries, currants- the fruits of which were dried, stored, made into jams and liqueurs and wonderful cartwheel tarts on pâte brisée and crème pâtissière and almond paste. My memories are flavored with their scents, their colors, their names. My mother tended them as if they were her favorite children. Smudge pots against the frost, which we base every spring. And in summer, to keep the birds away, we would tie shapes cut out of silver paper onto the ends of the branches that would shiver and flick-flack in the wind, moose blowers of string drawn tightly across empty tin cans to make eerie bird-frightening sounds, windmills of colored paper that would spin wildly, so that the orchard was a carnival of baubles and shining ribbons and shrieking wires, like a Christmas party in midsummer. And the trees all had names. Belle Yvonne, my mother would say as she passed a gnarled pear tree. Rose d'Aquitane. Beurre du Roe Henry. Her voice at these times was soft, almost monotone. I could not tell whether she was speaking to me or to herself. Conference. Williams. Ghislane de Penthièvre. This sweetness.

Then he went up to the window. His heart began pounding excitedly when he turned back the yellow linen of the curtain. An enchantingly beautiful spectacle was revealed before him — although today he immediately noticed that there was something strange in the entire aspect of this extensive and excellently arranged Garden. Precisely what amazed him he was still unable to say right away, and he began to examine the Garden attentively. What was there so unpleasant in its beauty? Why was the Youth's heart trembling so painfully? Was it that everything in the enchanted Garden was too exact. All the paths were laid out geometrically, and all were of the same width, and all were covered with precisely the same amount of yellow sand; the plants were all arranged with exaggerated orderliness; the trees were trimmed in the form of spheres, cones and cylinders; the flowers were arranged according to the various shades so that their composition was pleasing to the eye, but for some reason or other this wounded the soul. But giving it careful thought, what was there unpleasant in that orderliness which merely bore witness to the careful attention which someone paid to the Garden? Of course there was no reason for this to cause the strange apprehension which oppressed the Youth. But it was in something else as yet incomprehensible to the Youth. One thing was for certain, though, that this Garden did not resemble any other garden which the Youth had happened to see in his time. Here he saw giant flowers of an almost too brilliant color — at times it seemed that many-colored fires were burning in the midst of the luxuriant greenery — brown and black stalks of creeping growths, thick like tropical serpents; leaves of a strange shape and immeasurable size, whose greeness seemed to be unnaturally brilliant. Heady and languid fragrances wafted through the window in gentle waves, breaths of vanilla, frankincense and bitter almond, sweet and bitter, ecstatic and sad, like some joyous funereal mysterium. The Youth felt the tender yet lively touches of the gentle wind. But in the Garden it seemed as if the wind had no strength and lay exhausted on the tranquil green grass and in the shadows beneath the bushes of the strange growths. And because the trees and grass of the strange Garden were breathlessly quiet and could not hear the softly blowing wind above them and did not reply to it, they seemed to be inanimate. And thus they were deceitful, evil and hostile to man. ("The Poison Garden")

In the 1930's Yanik brought blinis and apple charlottes, beef stroganoff and kulich to Tehran, opening the first confectionary with a garden café. He came with his wife, Nina, who spooned cinnamon-scented ground beef and onions into delicate piroshkies and learned to cook Persian food by trial and error, nourishing her family and customers with a generous spirit, mingling delicately with neighbors, and learning to speak Farsi. To steady their leap across borders, Yanik changed his surname from Yedemsky to Yadegar, and planted a small orchard of pomegranate, almond, and mulberry trees that would shade the terrace tables.

Letojanni is a little strip of a village with the sea in front and mountains behind, and I went up, past the fig and almond trees, until I found the terraces, each like a big garden, bordered by low stone walls. I felt like an explorer who has suddenly come across hidden treasure. The Interdonato is such an individual lemon that even through up until the Second World War it was very popular in England for serving with tea, in Sicily these days, they barely know of it on the other side of the island.

Water problems in the western United States, when viewed from afar, can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: all we need to do is turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers.

Mut war nicht die Abwesenheit von Angst, sondern die Abwesenheit von Egoismus. Das wurde mir in dem Moment klar. Wenn man die Intressen des anderen über die eigene stellt. Ich hatte Baba falsch eingeschätzt. Er war alles andere als ein Feigling. Wie sollten wir ohne ihn überleben?

How could we know that the Russian military kept testing and developing new systems? With Yeltsin in charge, the military didn’t seem to matter very much.

There is absolutely nothing sacred about freedom of information,” he said, “when it can be used to undermine social progress.

Jean Kirkpatrick, made a strong point during her career that left-wing totalitarianism was far more dangerous than fascism. She maintained that fascism invariably left alone areas of cultural expression that it did not consider directly threatening to its political existence.

You can’t tell the politicians from the magicians, if you know what I mean,” and he flicked an imaginary cigar and flexed his eyebrows.

If it keeps the streets safe, people will accept it.

Of course the fascists in Moscow think it’s just fine if progressives in America approve of an emigration program to Israel. They’ve been saying for years that Zionists and Freemasons control the world.

Could there be another civil war in the United States?

Almost every day a beautiful woman wearing a ball gown made of grey parachute silk and a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with grey roses visits me. Hardly have I sat down in my armchair, tired from work, but I hear her steps outside on the pavement. She sweeps in at the gate, past the almond tree, and there she is, on the threshold of my workshop. Hastily she comes over to me, like a doctor afraid that she may be too late to save a sinking patient. She takes off her hat and her hair tumbles about her shoulders, she strips off her fencing gloves and tosses them onto this little table, and she bends down towards me. I close my eyes in a swoon – and how it goes on after that point, I do not know. One thing is certain: we never say a word. The scene is always a silent one. I think the grey lady understands only her mother tongue, German, which I have not once spoken since I parted from my parents at Oberwiesenfeld airport in Munich in 1939, and which survives in me as no more than an echo, a muted and incomprehensible murmur. It may possibly have something to do with this loss of language, this oblivion, Ferber went on, that my memories reach no further back than my ninth or eighth year, and that I recall little of the Munich years after 1933 other than processions, marches and parades.

That’s an almond tree. Its spring blossoms are the symbol of indiscretion—

A seven-armed golden lampstand is perpetually aflame with holy oil to light the tent. It is shaped like a blossoming almond tree, a symbol of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden so long ago. But it is also considered the ‘light of the world’ that gives light to all men.

Next come the magickally important Hebrew letters Yud-Heh-Vahv-Heh, YHVH for short, the Tetragrammaton. I have already discussed it, but let’s add some more information. The Yud looks like this: . The upper tip of the Yud is associated with the first Sephira. The rest of the Yud, along with the Heh (which looks like this: ), is associated with the second through fourth Sephiroht. The Vahv is an elongated Yud and looks like this: . It is related to the fourth through ninth Sephiroht. Notice the overlap between the Vahv and Heh. The second or last Heh is related to the tenth Sephira. The first Heh is known as the Heh Superior (Sup.) and the second Heh is known as the Heh Inferior (Inf.). Hebrew is read from right to left, and the Tetragrammaton looks like this: Vertically, it looks like this: The creatures in the next column are both real and unreal, while the tools of the following column are magickal tools. The lamen is a medallion hung around the neck to represent a certain power or quality. The names are the various God, archangelic, and angelic names, along with other words of power. The traditional magician of the Middle Ages wore two robes: an outer robe, representing the silence necessary to being a magician, which concealed a hidden, inner robe of truth. Today, most magicians wear only one robe, the two robes being more symbolic than actual. Finally, the last column is self-explanatory with the sole added note that the plant associated with the first Sephira is an almond “aflower.” That is, it should be blooming. This list of Kabalistic correspondences is by no means complete. But it is a good start. I suggest that you make up a series of Trees of Life, each one filled out with one of the columns. You may wish also to make up a very large Tree of Life putting many of the correspondences associated with a Sephira in the drawing of that Sephira. I urge a deep study of the correspondences now. Their importance will become clearer to you as we move into the study of Grey Magick. For a far more complete version

Rebecca’s image of herself had been stamped in puberty, tall and gangly, skin hyper-pigmented with spots, and soda-bottle bottom bifocals to correct eyes that had crossed at age five. Now thirty-seven years old, she stood a full six feet, with erect posture and a decisive stride. Her fiery red hair, dramatically set off against a canvas of what now registered as sparkling freckles, as the result of a recessive gene on chromosome sixteen. With high cheekbones, a narrow nose, flush lips, she presented a striking image. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes, surgically uncrossed at age twelve, shimmered when she smiled.

You cannot go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new ending.

olive trees. As I looked closer at them I wondered if they had escaped; their trunks and roots were so gnarled and scarred it looked as if they had been weeping for centuries. I stared at one of the farms as we passed. A few lemon trees sprinkled the land and a dozen or more almond trees, but they looked as

So they went to a place that only they knew-- the mixed-nut forest where the mixed-nut trees grew. As the cubs picked almonds and walnuts, pistachios, too, which Papa Bear claimed as his Thanksgiving due, the entire forest started to lurch. The cubs fell like stones from their top-lofty perch. But they landed not with a bone-jarring bump. They landed instead with a comfortable “whump.” For you see, the cubs had been caught in mid-air in the dumpster-sized paw of a monster-sized bear. It was Bigpaw, of course. The monster HAD come. Talk about scared! The normally talkative cubs were struck dumb. Suffice it to say, Something surprising Happened that day. With a bit of a smile and nary a sound, he gently placed them down on the ground. What a shock! What a surprise! For despite his manner and imposing size, Bigpaw was nice, gentle, and shy-- a friendly, helpful sort of a guy. Those cubs knew what they had to do-- tell that only part of the legend was true. Though he was powerful, fearsome, and tall, the monster called Bigpaw was no monster at all. It was important news, so off they hurried, leaving Bigpaw looking a little worried. “Little cubs! Little cubs! You forgot your mixed nuts!” This certainly was true, no ifs, ands, or buts.

In a crumbling park in the crumbling back end of Copacabana, a woman stopped under an almond tree with a suitcase and a cigar. She

Sometimes, when he got home from work he took me up to the roof. There he set up a telescope and explained the constellations to me, whispered their names into my ear, as if we were the only two people who knew those names, as if they were a secret between us. I felt his warm breath, smelling of almonds, and if father had a drink before, he'd bring me to bed, let me change into my nightgown, give me a kiss, his beard stubble brushing against my cheek, and stroke my hair. Then he'd lay his hand on the radiator just as gently as he had touched my head earlier and leave the room.

Perhaps under the influence of too much Filipino palm wine, Pigafetta marveled at the coconut and all its uses. “This palm bears a fruit, named cocho, which is as large as the head or thereabouts, and its first husk is green and two fingers thick, in which are found certain fibers of which those people make the ropes by which they bind their boats. Under this husk is another, very hard and thicker than that of a nut. . . . And under the said husk there is a white marrow of a finger’s thickness, which they eat with meat and fish, as we do bread, and it has the flavor of an almond. . . . From the center of this marrow there flows a water which is clear and sweet and very refreshing, like an apple.” The Filipinos taught their visitors how to produce milk from the coconut, “as we proved by experience.” They pried the meat of the coconut from the shell, combined it with the coconut’s liquor, and filtered the mixture through cloth. The result, said the chronicler, “became like goat’s milk.” Pigafetta was so moved by the coconut’s versatility that he declared, with some exaggeration, that two palm trees could sustain a family of ten for a hundred years. Their idyll lasted a week, each day bringing with it new discoveries and a growing intimacy with their genial Filipino hosts. “These people entered into very great familiarity and friendship with us, and made us understand several things in their language, and the name of some islands which we saw before us,” Pigafetta commented. “We took great pleasure with them, because they were merry and conversable.” But Magellan nearly destroyed the idyll when he invited the Filipinos aboard Trinidad. He incautiously showed his guests “all his merchandise, namely cloves, cinnamon, pepper, walnut, nutmeg, ginger, mace, gold, and all that was in the ship.” Clearly

I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed. -- Nikos Kazantzakis

He was, of course, only a dog, an animal like all the rest, but at the same time he had a dual and mysterious nature. I too loved him for his combination of simplicity and variety. Now he is dead, like my father to whom I gave him, and he lies buried under an almond tree overlooking the sea, in Liguria, that land of mine where I can no longer set foot, because those in power, in their fear of all that is sacred, seem to have discovered that I too have a dual nature and am, like my dog, half baron and half lion.

What's this? Must I be held enthralled Again, cruel skies, to fleeting dreams Of grandeur Time will surely mock? Must I again be forced to glimpse Amid the shadows and the fog The majesty and faded pomp That waft inconstant on the wind? Must I again be left to face Life's disillusion or the risks To which man's limits are exposed From birth and never truly end? This cannot be. It cannot be. Behold me here, a slave again To fortune's whims. As I have learned That life is really just a dream, I say to you, false shadows, Go! My deadened senses know your schemes, To feign a body and a voice When voice and body both are shams. I've no desire for majesty That's phony or for pompous flam, Illusions of sheer fantasy That can't withstand the slightest breeze And dissipate entirely like The blossoms on an almond tree That bloom too early in the spring Without a hint to anyone. The beauty, light, and ornament Reflecting from their rosy buds Fade all too soon; these wilt and fall When but the gentlest gusts blow by. I know you all too well, I do, To fancy you'd act otherwise Toward other souls who likewise sleep. So let this vain pretending cease; I'm disabused of all I thought And know now life is but a dream

There is another thing about the Chinese: they do not like to have unfriendly powers on either side of them.

We rode back slowly and I took some deep breaths of the country air, which smelled so good – of the horses, and the leather of their tack, and the faint scent of blossom from a line of almond trees that we passed.