Evergreen Tree Quotes

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

The room was darker and smelled of evergreen, as though my mother had been dreaming of trees.

December is celebrated quite heartily here in the United States. Aggresively, one might say. Every conceivable space is corseted with strands of twinkle lights, buildings are smothered beneath greenery, and a mass mania for erecting oversized, inflatable, waving "snowmen" in front of homes erupts amid the populace. It's quite a hysteria- and the evergreen trees are not just a myth, Vasile. People really do purchase them, in abundance. They are for sale everywhere. Imagine paying for the privilege of dragging a filthy piece of forest into your living area for the purpose of bedecking it with glass balls and staring at it. Why a tree? If one needed to display glass balls-and I highly discorage it-why not just a case of some sort? A rack?

November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.

This couldn’t be just a lake. No real water was ever blue like that. A light breeze stirred the pin-cherry tree beside the window, ruffled the feathers of a fat sea gull promenading on the pink rocks below. The breeze was full of evergreen spice.

The leaves on the white-barked quaky trees around the nearby lake glow like embers, fiery gold and auburn against the evergreens. The sight is a warm welcome home.

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances! Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine! Long may the tree, in his banner that glances, Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line! Heaven send it happy dew, Earth lend it sap anew, Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow, While every Highland glen Sends our shout back again, 'Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!

The blossoms seem unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curtains that are set up among the blossoming trees so invariably that one has to come to think of them as the attire of cherry blossoms; there were no bustling tea-stalls, no holiday crowds of flower-viewers, no one hawking balloons and toy windmills; instead there were only the cherry trees blossoming undisturbed among the evergreens, making one feel as though he were seeing the naked bodies of the blossoms. Nature's free bounty and useless extravagance had never appeared so fantastically beautiful as it did this spring. I had an uncomfortable suspicion that Nature had come to reconquer the earth for herself.

I give thanks for the wise qualities of the evergreen trees that have stood by me this day: may you show me how my own heart can be evergreen and growing through winters of doubt and darkness.

To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive, telluric power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion. Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully. In the Pacific Northwest I met a man who had schooled himself in the speech of needled evergreens; on a breezy day you could drive him, blindfolded, to any patch of coastal forest and place him, still blind, beneath a particular tree -- after a few moments he would tell you, by listening, just what species of pine or spruce or fir stood above him (whether he stood beneath a Douglas fir or a grand fir, a Sitka spruce or a western red cedar). His ears were attuned, he said, to the different dialects of the trees.

Avelina raised her hand to her face, the one Lord Thornbeck had squeezed a moment ago, and was overcome by his familiar scent—the smell of evergreen trees and mint leaves the servants put in his laundry. Warmth washed over her as she remembered how he had held her tight, much tighter than necessary, sitting on the balcony floor. Surely

The loveliness of the day was enough to knock you down. Swallows rioted above the calm green lid of the lake. Birch trees gleamed like filaments among the dark evergreens. No planes disturbed the sky. I felt dead to it, though I did take a kind of comfort that all of this beauty was out here, persisting like mad, whether you hearkened to it or not.

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

In the summer when the wind stirs the trees, there is that rushing, swelling sound of masses of heavy foliage, a sound that drowns, in its full-blossomed, undulating, ocean-like murmur, the individual sorrows of trees. But across this leafless unfrequented field these two evergreens could lift to each other their sub-human voices and cry their ancient vegetation-cry, clear and strong; that cry which always seems to come from some underworld of Being, where tragedy is mitigated by a strange undying acceptance beyond the comprehension of the troubled hearts of men and women.

Then there was silence, the air like ice. Brittle-looking birch trees with black marks on their white bark, and some kind of small untidy evergreens rolled up like sleepy bears. The frozen lake not level but mounded along the shore, as if the waves had turned to ice in the act of falling.

Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last.

Cootamundra wattle Meaning: I wound to heal Acacia baileyana | New South Wales Graceful tree with fern-like foliage and bright golden-yellow globe-shaped flower heads. Adaptable, hardy evergreen, easy to grow. Profuse flowering in winter. Heavily fragrant and sweetly scented. Produces abundant pollen, favored for feeding bees in the production of honey.

Hamish’s family were unusual in that they had always celebrated Christmas—tree, turkey, presents and all. In parts of the Highlands, like Lochdubh, the old spirit of John Knox still wandered, blasting anyone with hellfire should they dare to celebrate this heathen festival. Hamish had often pointed out that none other than Luther was credited with the idea of the Christmas tree, having been struck by the sight of stars shining through the branches of an evergreen. But to no avail. Lochdubh lay silent and dark beside the black waters of the loch.

The groves and thickets of smaller trees are full of blooming evergreen vines. These vines are not arranged in separate groups, or in delicate wreaths, but in bossy walls and heavy, mound-like heaps and banks. Am made to feel that I am now in a strange land. I know hardly any of the plants, but few of the birds, and I am unable to see the country for the solemn, dark, mysterious cypress woods which cover everything.

There's something about being from Maine that you can never let hold of - the pointed firs and feathery pine trees, the wide open sky and stars and moon on a cold night, the ocean, which smells of this wonderful mix of saline and savory, and the colors - deep golds and reds and browns in the fall lit against a perfect blue sky; the lush, wet greens of summer and clean, white snow of winter piled against dark, stoic evergreens.

Light be the turf of thy tomb! May its verdure like emeralds be: There should not be the shadow of gloom In aught that reminds us of thee: Young flowers, and an evergreen tree May spring from the spot of thy rest; But not cypress nor yew let us see; For why should we mourn for the blest?

The evening's light, silvery, casts its dull brightness onto the trees--trees gelid in this blue light of winter. But whiteness dominates with the pines and evergreens steeped in vibrant grades of silver. I hear notes in the mist, like silvery chattering, coins in a pocket, the jangle of keys.

Ah! darling, my life unrolls itself before my eyes like one of the great highways of France, level and easy, shaded with evergreen trees. This century will not see another Bonaparte; and my children, if I have any, will not be rent from me. They will be mine to train and make men of — the joy of my life.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, . . ." ~Lord Byron So walk with me a little while in the pathless woods and reflect upon the unknown.... ...I find myself enchanted by Byron's "pathless woods," and it isn't hard to visualize them: tall, crowding trees, between which you make your way; the scent of earth and foliage and of evergreens. And, looking up, a patch of bright blue sky.... And, unless a leaf fell or a bird sang, there would be silence in the woods except for one's own footsteps which would, I dare say, be hushed also. In the woods there must be a sense that time has ceased and that for a moment we pause on the edge of some extraordinary discovery, that for the space of a heartbeat we are close to knowledge, on the verge of the solution to all problems, on the threshold of an answer. Pathless woods, steeped in peace and towering between heaven and earth would, I think, have that answer waiting for us if we were receptive enough to hear it. ...Here in the woods, perhaps we can listen with the heart and with the spirit, and hear the trees speak of growth, and the earth of seeds and silence, and looking up to the sky, hear sunlight singing.

I was born in Nature's wide domain! The trees were all that sheltered my infant limbs, the blue heavens all that covered me. I am one of Nature's children. I have always admired her. She shall be my glory: her features, her robes, and the wreath about her brow, the seasons, her stately oaks, and the evergreen — her hair, ringlets over the earth — all contribute to my enduring love of her. And wherever I see her, emotions of pleasure roll in my breast, and swell and burst like waves on the shores of the ocean, in prayer and praise to Him who has placed me in her hand. It is thought great to be born in palaces, surrounded with wealth — but to be born in Nature's wide domain is greater still! I

Friends! It is only when the cold season comes that we know the pine tree and the cypress to be evergreens, and friends are known in adversity.

The success of Asian and North American trees is partly down to the absence of similar European evergreens, which died out during the ice ages.

You walk down a hallway papered in playing cards, row upon row of clubs and spades. Lanterns fashioned from additional cards hang above, swinging gently as you pass by. A door at the end of the hall leads to a spiraling iron staircase. The stairs go both up and down. You go up, finding a trapdoor in the ceiling. The room it opens into is full of feathers that flutter downward. When you walk through them, they fall like snow over the door in the floor, obscuring it from sight. There are six identical doors. You choose one at random, trailing a few feathers with you. The scent of pine is overwhelming as you enter the next room to find yourself in a forest full of evergreen trees. Only these trees are not green but bright and white, luminous in the darkness surrounding them. They are difficult to navigate. As soon as you begin walking the walls are lost in shadows and branches. There is a sound like a woman laughing nearby, or perhaps it is only the rustling of the trees as you push your way forward, searching for the next door, the next room. You feel the warmth of breath on your neck, but when you turn there is no one there.

As the little launch turned out into the lake, Nancy was entranced with the beautiful sight before her. The delicate azure blue of the sky and the mellow gold of the late afternoon sun were reflected in the shimmering surface of the water. “What a lovely scene for an oil painting!” she thought. As they sped along, however, Nancy kept glancing at the cottages, intermingled with tall evergreen trees that bordered the shore line.

Things That Cannot Be Compared Summer and winter. Night and day. Rain and sunshine. Youth and age. A person’s laughter and his anger. Black and white. Love and hatred. The little indigo plant and the great philodendron. Rain and mist. When one has stopped loving somebody, one feels that he has become someone else, even though he is still the same person. In a garden full of evergreens the crows are all asleep. Then, towards the middle of the night, the crows in one of the trees suddenly wake up in a great flurry and start flapping about. Their unrest spreads to the other trees, and soon all the birds have been startled from their sleep and are cawing in alarm. How different from the same crows in daytime!

Under this pine tree I let you down and you let me down. Under this tree, you betrayed me and I betrayed you. Right here, I forgot you and you forgot me. Under this pine that they call 'evergreen' we both discovered that nothing lasts forever.

the universe began fourteen billion years ago with the emergence of elementary particles in the form of primordial plasma, which quickly morphed into atoms of hydrogen, helium, and lithium; a hundred million years later, galaxies began to appear, and in one of these, the Milky Way, minerals arranged themselves into living cells that constructed advanced life, including evergreen trees, coral reefs, and the vertebrate nervous systems that humans used to discover this entire sequence of universe development.

town of Angel Haven lies somewhere in the central United States, its landscape blessed long ago by the Star Witches. A vast forest of majestic trees surrounds the town, creating a natural barricade from the world outside. The trees range from evergreen saplings

I pull on my hat and veil and lift the same handsaw I used on the evergreen boughs. The branch is about six inches too high for me to reach. Cursing, I lug the broken wooden base of the old frame underneath the tree and try to gingerly balance on what’s left of it. The odds are about equal that I will either manage to saw down the branch or break my ankle. I nearly sob with relief when the branch is free, and carry it slowly and gently to the new hive. I give it a sharp jerk, watching the bees rain down into the box. I do this again, praying that the queen is one of them.

The coast redwood tree is an evergreen conifer and a member of the cypress family. It's scientific name is Sequoia sempervirens. No one knows exactly when or where the redwood entered the history of life on earth, though it is an ancient kind of tree, and has come down to our world as an inheritance out of deep time.

Spend more time in nature to boost your own natural killer cells and enhance your immune system; bonus points for frequently visiting a forest with lots of evergreen trees. Or at least use some forest-based essential oils like cypress. •​Consider boron supplements for stem cells, as well as the other listed stem cell enhancers. Calcium fructoborate or food-grade boron (tetraborate) work well. •​Make sure your sexual function is that of a young person. If it isn’t, get your hormone levels checked and look at any prescription meds that may be causing a problem. To improve sexual function, consider GAINSWave treatments or simply practice Kegel exercises on a daily basis.

Most often they speak according to their kind – the deep rumble of oak, the whisper of the birch, or the singsong chant of the alder. The evergreen stands of pine have voices sharp as needles. But the forest can speak as one, when it must. When the trees so choose, they think with one mind. When there is danger, especially, they speak in one voice of a thousand echoes. I hate it when they do this. For the forest mind is always right, and will hear no argument.

The bushes puzzled him, they were so big, almost trees, some twice his height, and there seemed so many. They were planted all along the edges of the towering droop-limbed hemlocks that sheltered the place, and in the acres sheltered there were dozens of great rectangular clumps like loaves of porous green bread. The bushes were evergreen. With their zigzag branches and long oval leaves fingering in every direction they seemed to belong to a different climate, to a different land, whose gravity pulled softer than this one.

THE OLD GROWTH, THE MAPLES, turned first. They rusted one leaf at a time, where ocean breezes bruised them, late in August. Paulo, the tree warden, once told Journeyman that the first trees to change reveal a map of damage. The earliest turning were those once sickened or lightning-struck. So Journeyman saw the season as a theater of succumbing. The wind’s bite called each tree to solidarity with the weakest. Only the evergreens were refuseniks. Primordial trees, dinosaur trees—in their gummy hearts, they were deader than the trees that turned.

A girl and a boy, sitting lazily cross-legged under a pale green willow, picking at the grass. She is lying with her head in his lap, long red hair fanned against his knee. Her skin is not my unnatural red but like honeyed cream. She grins up at him, his eyes the color of an evergreen forest, of dragonfly wings, his corn-gold, too-long hair falling over his forehead. And she laughs. When she does her back, her throat arches slightly, and he blushes. He smells of wheat fields and fallen autumn apples soft against the earth, and it is a smell she knows like her own. Under the filmy reed-curtain of the old willow tree, they hold hands and talk quietly, shoes discarded like peach pits. The sun is low in the sky, warm and orange-gold on their young faces, their strong white smiles and freshly washed hair. The light spills onto their shoulders like water from a well. There are sharp-smelling rosemary branches braided into her hair, with their little blue blossoms, and the oil is on their brown fingers. The boy whispers something in the girl’s ear, and she closes her eyes, lashes smoking cheekbones like bundles of sage.

Wynter's Pass was a picturesque region in the north of Vohlfhein, where the Bleak Hills eventually collapsed into the Frozen Sea. From the back of Mr. Buckles, who had been on a slow trot since sunrise, Monch watched the light glisten off of the frozen branches of the evergreens. As the sun warmed the frozen ground, sending the evening's frost into retreat, Monch absorbed the splendor of it all and wondered how expensive the local real estate must be around here. He then contemplated attempting to find an agent that would represent his interests well. "This land is such a spectacular wonder," the Lion of Ahriman declared. "It would be very much sought after if they could just do something about the bears, the White Orts, the wolves, the bloodthirsty cannibals, the snow manapés, the frost wizards, the northern bandit gangs, the dire lynxes, the similarly sounding but not related pygmy bloodthirsty cannibals, the demon possessed yaks, the dead-soul animated trees, the..." Monch paused for a moment. "It just occurred to me that this land is really not safe at all. It seems almost everything in it wants to kill me," the Templar admitted.

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

Sitting under a tree, I studied my options. The fall flowers were in full bloom: verbena, goldenrod, chrysanthemum, and a late-blooming rose. The carefully tended city beds around the park held layers of textured evergreen but little color. I set to work, considering height, density, texture, and layers of scent, removing touch-damaged petals with careful pinches. When I had finished, spiraling white mums emerged from a cushion of snow-colored verbena, and clusters of pale climbing roses circled and dripped over the edge of a tightly wrapped nosegay. I removed every thorn. The bouquet was white as a wedding and spoke of prayers, truth, and an unacquainted heart.

The spruce is sculpted by the elements, bottlebrush scrawny, topiaryed by the weather. This boreal forest stretches over eight thousand miles in an unbroken line around the circumference of the globe: 30 percent of the world’s tree cover, four million square miles, the planet’s single largest biome. A broad, evergreen brushstroke that encircles the north, running through North America, Scandinavia, Siberia, marking the band of the subarctic. Forests of moose, of lynx, of bear. Forests of thimbleberry, strawberry, nagoonberry, lowbush cranberry, highbush cranberry, watermelon berry, bunchberry, crowberry, huckleberry, blueberry, cloudberry, bearberry, salmonberry. Forests home to many of the world’s remaining hunter-gatherer societies, summers of wildfires and perpetual light, and winters of fifty below.

horizontal division between clearness and opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor throughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely, that the crunching of the waggon-wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized. Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny. The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were

We each took a cup as we passed and drank the sweet chilled beverage- it was refreshing and tasted like ginger ale with a swirl of summer peaches. Then Peaseblossom waved us through the open door. "Wow," said Henry. We stepped into an enchanted culinary forest. The walls had been painted to look like a thicket of trees, and the ceiling resembled the summer sky in the woods, complete with overhanging branches. There were topiaries and baskets overflowing with wildflowers. The tables were grouped to one side, still draped in their shimmering coverings. Dreamy music floated through the air, and piney, herby scents wafted on gentle currents. Butterflies flitted around and landed on people's heads and shoulders. And everywhere we looked, there were trays of baked goods- most of them, I realized, straight from the pages of Puffy Fay's cookbook. The pastry case and the counter near it were hidden behind curtains that looked like a wall of evergreens.

I took a shower after dinner and changed into comfortable Christmas Eve pajamas, ready to settle in for a couple of movies on the couch. I remembered all the Christmas Eves throughout my life--the dinners and wrapping presents and midnight mass at my Episcopal church. It all seemed so very long ago. Walking into the living room, I noticed a stack of beautifully wrapped rectangular boxes next to the tiny evergreen tree, which glowed with little white lights. Boxes that hadn’t been there minutes before. “What…,” I said. We’d promised we wouldn’t get each other any gifts that year. “What?” I demanded. Marlboro Man smiled, taking pleasure in the surprise. “You’re in trouble,” I said, glaring at him as I sat down on the beige Berber carpet next to the tree. “I didn’t get you anything…you told me not to.” “I know,” he said, sitting down next to me. “But I don’t really want anything…except a backhoe.” I cracked up. I didn’t even know what a backhoe was. I ran my hand over the box on the top of the stack. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine--so unadorned, so simple, I imagined that Marlboro Man could have wrapped it himself. Untying the twine, I opened the first package. Inside was a pair of boot-cut jeans. The wide navy elastic waistband was a dead giveaway: they were made especially for pregnancy. “Oh my,” I said, removing the jeans from the box and laying them out on the floor in front of me. “I love them.” “I didn’t want you to have to rig your jeans for the next few months,” Marlboro Man said. I opened the second box, and then the third. By the seventh box, I was the proud owner of a complete maternity wardrobe, which Marlboro Man and his mother had secretly assembled together over the previous couple of weeks. There were maternity jeans and leggings, maternity T-shirts and darling jackets. Maternity pajamas. Maternity sweats. I caressed each garment, smiling as I imagined the time it must have taken for them to put the whole collection together. “Thank you…,” I began. My nose stung as tears formed in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect gift. Marlboro Man reached for my hand and pulled me over toward him. Our arms enveloped each other as they had on his porch the first time he’d professed his love for me. In the grand scheme of things, so little time had passed since that first night under the stars. But so much had changed. My parents. My belly. My wardrobe. Nothing about my life on this Christmas Eve resembled my life on that night, when I was still blissfully unaware of the brewing thunderstorm in my childhood home and was packing for Chicago…nothing except Marlboro Man, who was the only thing, amidst all the conflict and upheaval, that made any sense to me anymore. “Are you crying?” he asked. “No,” I said, my lip quivering. “Yep, you’re crying,” he said, laughing. It was something he’d gotten used to. “I’m not crying,” I said, snorting and wiping snot from my nose. “I’m not.” We didn’t watch movies that night. Instead, he picked me up and carried me to our cozy bedroom, where my tears--a mixture of happiness, melancholy, and holiday nostalgia--would disappear completely.

HEXAGON Snowflakes descend purposefully or wistfully but, surrounded by their tiny peers, each is confident they together will soon hide the meadows, driveways, roofs, fences, the stripped gardens. A speck of dust or pollen lofted to the top of the sky encountered a water drop that in the celestial cold adhered and froze, forming an ice crystal which, now weightier than the air it floated on, began to waft downwards, adding water particles as it traveled, six spikes or arms creating a filigree all its own as it passed through differing temperatures and amounts of dampness. Its delicate white intricacy, though, contains an inner space also unique. One offers a forest of snowy evergreens where, as afternoon light dims, a man wearing a homespun hooded garment and bent under a sack thrown over a shoulder plods along a footpath winding uphill between firs and pines. With each step, his breath appears like smoke until he and his burden are lost from view, and a chill wind sways the thin twigs of bushes emerging from drifts beside the track. In that flake is preserved an era in which the body endures and welcomes the simple opposites: icy cold against face skin and eventually a fire’s warmth, sodden feet and, at last, these dried once more, while the eye registers an omnipresent starkness —white fields, white roads, white trees— which, like a minor key, can please the mind. Here is the past returned to Earth by the water that changes form but does not die. In this vision, each frozen tuft among the millions that lower to the ground is a memento mori that affirms: No life is useless or pointless, since each in its turn advances the future. Yet all are swiftly forgotten in the beauty of the falling snow.

Mr Casaubon’s behaviour about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr Brooke, and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks of courtship. The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it. On a grey but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and Celia. Mr Casaubon’s home was the manor-house. Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite. In the beginning of his career, Mr Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also. It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the south-west front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun. This was the happy side of the house, for the south and east looked rather melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds here were more confined, the flower-beds showed no very careful tendance, and large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten yards from the windows. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background. ‘Oh dear!’ Celia said to herself, ‘I am sure Freshitt Hall would have been pleasanter than this.’ She thought of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rosebush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately-odorous petals—Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and weather-worn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr Casaubon’s bias had been different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.

Cedric, where is my son?” I ask the man. He smiles. “I think you can guess, sir.” — The sounds of neoPlast swords knocking together and boots on stone greet Sevro and me as we enter the dueling grotto. There, vines crawl over granite fountains and along the damp stone floor. Evergreen needles drift in cumulous shapes from the top of the trees. And in the center of the grotto, under the watching eyes of the gargoyles adorning the fountains, a young boy and girl circle each other at the center of a chalk circle. The seven other children of their pack watch on, along with two Gold women. Sevro pulls me to the side so we remain unseen and sit out of sight on the edge of a granite fountain to watch.

A city is different things to us at different times - of the day, of the year, of our life. Many years have passed since I was in the backseat of the car, taken with the razzle-dazzle. Today, I'm more drawn to the neighborhood coffee shops, or modest old parks like Abingdon Square in Greenwich Village, where farmers come to sell cheese and eggs under the London Plane trees. I have a soft spot for the little urban island like McCarthy Square, with its birdhouses - some with simple peak roofs; others with multiple stories and decks, made of miniature wood logs, like ski chalets - that poke out from shrubs and evergreens. I like the quiet of the West Village in the morning, where sidewalk chalkboards outside restaurants and coffee shops promise caffeine and better days, and streets paved with setts - Jane, West 12th, Bethune, Bank - feed into Washington Street like streams emptying into a river.

Every pine tree I walked beneath had its particular inflection, its needles hissing in frequencies subtly different from the ones before – the dictionary term is ‘psithurism’, the noise of wind passing through leaves – an evergreen language that sounded like whispered words.

A wise teacher was taking a stroll through the forest with a young pupil and stopped before a tiny tree. “Pull up that sapling,” the teacher instructed his pupil, pointing to a sprout just coming up from the earth. The youngster pulled it up easily with his fingers. “Now pull up that one,” said the teacher, indicating a more established sapling that had grown to about knee high to the boy. With little effort, the lad yanked and the tree came up, roots and all. “And now, this one,” said the teacher, nodding toward a more well-developed evergreen that was as tall as the young pupil. With great effort, throwing all his weight and strength into the task, using sticks and stone he found to pry up the stubborn roots, the boy finally got the tree loose. “Now,” the wise one said, “I’d like you to pull this one up.” The young boy followed the teacher’s gaze, which fell upon a mighty oak so tall the boy could scarcely see the top. Knowing the great struggle he’d just had pulling up the much smaller tree, he simply told his teacher, “I am sorry, but I can’t.” “My son, you have just demonstrated the power that habits will have over your life!” the teacher exclaimed. “The older they are, the bigger they get, the deeper the roots grow, and the harder they are to uproot. Some get so big, with roots so deep, you might hesitate to even try.

This was true mountain country, now, and true wilderness. Valley meadows, leafy trees halfway up the slopes, then evergreens gradually taking over at the higher altitudes... their road wound its way up and down through tree-tunnels that only intermittently allowed them to see the sky. It would have been a lovely journey under other circumstances. The weather remained fair, and remarkably pleasant, even if the night was going to be cold. She had only read about the wilderness, never experienced it for herself, and she found herself liking it a lot. Or- parts of it, anyway. The way it was never entirely silent, but simply 'quiet'- birdsong and insect noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of water. She had never before realized how noisy people were. And the forest was so beautiful. She wasn't at all used to deep forest; it was like being inside a living cathedral, with beams of light penetrating the tree-canopy and illuminating unexpected treasures, a moss-covered rock, a small cluster of flowers, a spray of ferns. These woods were 'old', too, the trees had trunks so big it would take three people to put their arms around them, and there was a scent to the place that somehow conveyed that centuries of leaves had fallen here and become earth.

The small town of Kasane stands on the high veld plains of the northern horn of Botswana, a tourist haven shouldering the economy of the small but rich country. The town is located some one thousand kilometers north-east of the Capital City, Gaborone, with its hard blue skies and river-clear air, Kasane is a piece of paradise in this desert region; a shit-hole for the natives apparently as I was to learn, but still the place is a slice of heaven for tourists coming from outside. At the center of the small town resides an underrated true wonder of nature. A place called Plateau from which one can observe a pack of lions stalking a herd of Zebras; wildebeests crowded together like bees; a fish eagle splashing against the slow moving river and come out bearing a fighting catfish; herds of elephants and Buffaloes grazing and browsing the green mass of flora that escorts what seems like a coiling dark green phantom. The entire place below Plateau to the north is a wide array of interconnected channels, caressed on the sides by tall evergreen grass. The true wonder that is the exemplar of the Chobe District. The gravel to the height of ‘Plateau’ snakes through tall, fat baobab trees rising and falling, offering breathtaking views of the dense ridges, then dipping into creeks filled with clusters of dilapidated shacks and mobile homes with junk cars and abandoned road construction machinery scattered about. It clings to more defined creeks with shallow rapids and water clear enough to drink.

The Baxter house sparkled with multicolored lights and evergreen garlands draped with icicles. The piney scent of a real Christmas tree mixed with the aroma of cinnamon from the gingerbread cookies reminded me of . . . nothing. Christmas Eve was not like this in Cuba.

I wonder if she could ever this right. This scene. In her sketch pad. The shape of the blue lake and the leaves spilled across the ground. The forest-green pine and evergreen trees. The enormous sky. Could she ever get the wind whipping through the remains of trees? Could she draw the cold air that eats at our hands and ears until they burn?

By the time the settlers and pioneers of America reached the West Coast, they had gone through many dramatic landscapes, but nothing quite prepared them for the size of the California redwoods. The giant trees led to many disputes, including the very name that should be applied to them. In 1853, British botanists proposed to name the trees Wellingtonia gigantea and called them “Wellingtonias” in honor of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. They justified the name on the grounds that the greatest tree in the world should bear the name of the greatest general in the world. Fortunately, the Americans resisted this choice and supported instead a native American name. Conservationists felt that so great a tree should not be named for a military general. They proposed instead the name Sequoia sempervirens, “evergreen Sequoia,” in honor of the man who invented a way of writing the Cherokee language and worked hard to promote literacy among his people. Both the coastal redwoods and the giant redwoods of the Sierra Nevada bear the genus name Sequoia, in honor of one of the greatest Indian intellectuals and leaders of the nineteenth century.

Her fingertips dug into his shoulders as she pressed closer. Then her lips parted to his, and there was no mistaking the passion in her response. Wild and sweet… His eyes were closed, but in his mind’s eye he saw the lights of the giant tree, and he knew he’d found a Christmas memory worth keeping.

The buzzing beneath my feet intensified as I neared the small pool of water. This had to be the gazing pool I'd heard about. Sheltered by tall, skinny evergreens and shrubs that held heavy clusters of small, delicate white flowers, it was shaded by the canopy of an old live oak tree that had moss growing at the base of its trunk. Curiosity drew me in. Faint ripples pulsed along the water's surface as the small pool burbled gently, peacefully, as if I relieved to be unburdened of its long-held secret about Bee. I studied the burbling, wondering what caused it, because it didn't appear that anyone had placed a running hose beneath its surface. There was no equipment at all. Just clear water. A knee-high mossy stone wall enclosed the pool, and ferns grew along its foundation, nestled snugly, their fronds rustling in the warm breeze. Suddenly I felt the urge to sit and stare into the water, and I absently smiled, thinking the gazing pool had been appropriately named.

From Shanghai, Meyer had sent seeds and cuttings of oats, millet, a thin-skinned watermelon, and new types of cotton. The staff of Fairchild's office watched with anticipation each time one of Meyer's shipments were unpacked. There were seeds of wild pears, new persimmons, and leaves of so-called Manchurian spinach that America's top spinach specialist would declare was the best America had ever seen. Meyer had delivered the first samples of asparagus ever to officially enter the United States. In 1908, few people had seen a soybean, a green legume common in central China. Even fewer people could have imagined that within one hundred years, the evolved descendants of soybeans that Meyer shipped back would cover the Midwest of the United States like a rug. Soybeans would be applied to more diverse uses than any other crop in history, as feed for livestock, food for humans (notably vegetarians), and even a renewable fuel called biodiesel. Meyer also hadn't come empty-handed. He had physically brought home a bounty, having taken from China a steamer of the Standard Oil Company that, unlike a passenger ship, allowed him limitless cargo and better onboard conditions for plant material. He arrived with twenty tons, including red blackberries, wild apricots, two large zelkova trees (similar to elms), Chinese holly shrub, twenty-two white-barked pines, eighteen forms of lilac, four viburnum bushes that produced edible red berries, two spirea bushes with little white flowers, a rhododendron bush with pink and purple flowers, an evergreen shrub called a daphne, thirty kinds of bamboo (some of them edible), four types of lilies, and a new strain of grassy lawn sedge.

Three windows. And in the third, high in the top storey of the solid, snow-hushed house on this hill at the edge of Christmas the most extraordinary face of all: a visage of curious alloy: earthly wisdom and heavenly innocence, grief like a stone and humor like flame; a face of age and yet of ageless youth. Marya Alexander, mother of Nell Dance, sits in her flowered rocker by the glass and sees through it the soft, white onslaught of the snow and read within each intricately. Jeweled flake the timelessness of Time itself and of loss and of love and of love’s ending. Upon her old spectacles perches a small gold parakeet and she puffs now pensively upon a cigarette and blows the ghost of smoke against the enchanted window pane and witnesses there, for an instant, the misted image of faces long lost beneath so many snows, and smiles to herself at the knowing that Christmastide and a good heart’s breath against a cold pane are enough to bring lost faces back in evergreen eternity.

The mansion itself was as impressive as the landscaping. Older than Griff by several decades, it was constructed of gray stone. Some of its walls were ivy covered like the estate wall. He followed the curving driveway and parked directly in front of the entrance, then got out of the borrowed Honda and approached the front door. It was flanked by urns containing evergreen trees. Idly Griff wondered how in hell they got a tree to grow in the shape of a corkscrew

There was a slight dampness to everything. The kitchen and the living room looked out at the water, and as I stood there I thought again how astonishing it was, just open water; there were rocks, and the dark water was swirling over them in waves with a whiteness as they hit the rocks, it was something. Farther out I could see two islands, one was small and the other was bigger, and they had a few evergreen trees on them, and you could see the rocks that surrounded them. There was a sweetness I felt at the sight of these two islands, and it reminded me of how when I was a child in our tiny house in the rural town of Amgash, Illinois, in the middle of fields of soybeans and corn there had been one tree in the field, and I had always thought of that tree as my friend. Now, as I looked at them, these two islands felt almost like that tree had once been to me then.

Quantum Girl Theory: Once she is gone, a missing girl becomes everything that everyone thinks she might be; our theories create her fate. She's a runaway, she's a maniac, she is bones shrouded in red cloth beneath an evergreen tree. She is a double, triple, quadruple exposure of any lifetime anyone could dream.

Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant.

The southwestern region of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu saw the growth of broadleaf evergreen trees

We got the tree back,” Orville said solemnly, “but the solstice comes every year no matter what. It’s the longest night, but it’s the turning point. From here on out, things get brighter.

Some 200 miles south of Gadau, where the climate is less severe, morsitans still has to vacate log sites in the dry season and breeds in the riverine vegetation of stream-beds together with tachinoides and palpalis. Still farther south, and approaching the forest belt, morsitans breeds under small, deciduous, umbrella-like Gardenia erubescens bushes in the savannah, until the grass fires destroy the leaves when the female larviposits under small thickets of evergreen Combretrum micranthum in eroded, waterless gullies. This seasonal shifting of the breeding grounds is not confined to West Africa. Recently Glasgow found that in a hot part of Tanzania morsitans breeds under logs in the wet season, but after the fires prefers rot holes in trees, returning to logs when the rains break. Burtt has found that pallipides breeds in the early dry season in deciduous thickets, but moves after the fires to evergreen thicket along the main watercourse. The wet-season site defeated him. When investigating a strange area, forget past experience; instead, consider the climatic conditions prevailing and the vegetation available, and remember the basic principles. The tsetse is a most adaptable insect: pupae have even been found on the floors of native huts.

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘you are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practise turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

A ray of light slipped inside the kitchen window, cutting through the early morning fog that covered the terrain. Alicia savored the crisp scent of pine trees that mingled with the aroma of her freshly brewed coffee. The chill of the Pacific Northwest morning seeped through the cabin’s walls, the fog swirling around the evergreens outside, creating an almost mystical atmosphere. She wrapped her hands around the warm mug, drawing comfort from its heat as she prepared for the full day ahead

Right now, looking out my kitchen window on a summer day on Capitol Hill, I see a complex, shifting scene composed of about 50 percent brick and 50 percent trees. It’s lovely, a riot of organic forms bouncing in the wind. The brick is festooned with lichen, ivy, and moss, its rigid geometry softened and blemished by hundreds of years of wind, rain, and life, and illuminated by splintered sunlight refracted through blowing branches and leaves. A squirrel skitters along a power line, balanced, at ease, “natural,” as if he’s been evolving to do this for a hundred thousand years. The trees are diverse, some deciduous and some evergreen. They look happy, at home, healthy, and strong. They are permanent residents, compared to any people. The birds and rodents that nest, chase, chatter, and squeal among them seem at home as well.

f you're living in a place that's just not big enough for that huge Christmas tree you'd love to have, get branches of evergreen, balsam, or juniper and use them to outline mirrors, arrange on mantels or windowsills, or decorate tabletops and bookshelves. Add gold or silver balls or showcase your holiday collectibles among the branches, such as snow villages, angels, and Christmas teacups. And don't forget to use plenty of unlit candles in seasonal colors. If you do light them, make sure the branches are arranged so they're not a fire hazard. Add a nativity scene to set the significant tone of the season. Make your home warm and welcoming, overflowing with love and good cheer. hose food shows on TV don't have anything on me! Cooking with your friends-inviting them to sit with you while you prepare a fantastic meal is something I've been doing for years. More often, though, I'll put my friends to work. We all have fun pitching in. I've had some of my best conversations while I was stirring a pot of soup and someone else was tossing a salad. I've also had some of my closest times with my husband in that warm, creative room in our house. Good talk seems to happen naturally in the kitchen. And teamwork is great fun! No one is lonely; no one feels left out. Creativity flourishes as you work together.

PROLOGUE: When Mandy Rose was eight years old, she saw Santa Claus. She slipped out of her room on Christmas Eve after her mother went to bed. As Mandy tiptoed down the hall, trying to be silent, she thought of the poem: ‘Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…’ The Christmas tree was still lit up in the living room, as if it, too, were waiting. The nighttime cold of the house bit through her flannel nightgown, and Mandy wished she’d grabbed her robe and slippers. But she didn’t want to risk going back down the hall and waking her mother. So she pulled a heavy blanket down from the back of the sofa and curled up under it. She laid her head on the arm of the couch to get a good view of the tree at the end of the room near her head, and the fireplace at the other end, down by her feet. Barely daring to breathe, she waited… The lights from the tree…

I skip down the driveway, hurry up the road, linger on the bridge for a moment, looking down at the reflection of the sky like mercury on the dark water, the foaming white suds near the rocks. Ice glistens on tree branches, frost webs over dried grasses in a sparkling net. The evergreens, dusted with the light snow that fell last night, are like a forest of Christmas trees. For the first time, I am struck by the austere beauty of this place.

The blur of looming evergreens zipped by me so quickly it was as though they were never really there at all. Sometimes I felt just like those trees, rooted in mud with no escape, while my life sat in a car and passed me by.

In this way they came at last to what looked like an impenetrable wall of dark evergreen trees, trees of a kind that the hobbits had never seen before: they branched out right from the roots, and were densely clad in dark glossy leaves like thornless holly, and they bore many stiff upright flower-spikes with large shining olive-coloured buds.

A stag, a beautiful stag as white as starlight, with evergreen eyes and antler so tall, Basia is afraid they will get stuck in the trees, When he walks, he leaves no marks on the woodland soil, and when Liska reaches out to touch his head, her hand goes through him as though he is made of mist. This is the strangest part of it all: every time Liska meets the stag, she tries to touch him. Every time, her hand passes through. Until one night, one rainy spring night, it does not.

The fairy realm Nala lived in lay deep inside the Tuduma Forest, a place bursting with evergreen thickets, Cape aloe, and rubber trees one hundred feet tall.

rest

Sea-foam tumbles onto the shore, claiming me gently in the way I've always craved. The ocean gathers me, carrying me over the surface like Cleopatra--- and I, every ounce as lovely as her and Aphrodite combined. Bit by bit the water swallows me, gently nipping at my skin until I dissolve into an aquatic spirit. Only then do I understand the language of angelfish and squid, and I move just as languidly. The sirens gape at me with their jewel-bright eyes and try to steal me as their own. But before I can be taken by those curious witches, I rise to the surface again. Everything glimmers here. I embrace the dusk with a hopeful smile. The sky blends into a watercolor of pastels and ambrosial stars. It's an aurora borealis of magenta and lavender, tempting me into the forest and away from the safety of the shore. Something's in the wind. I can feel it--- like the twinkling stars will finally lead me to the love I desire. I want it more than anything. The thought of it turns me feral, like a vampiress thirsty for a drop of blood. I dart through the forest, trailing a path of golden light. Past the evergreens and pines, underneath the moon, I become wild and free. Sweet summer fruit grows from trees, ripe and sparkling. With every cautious step I take, the flowers blossom. But they don't just grow. They glow. Ultraviolet irises, sugar-dusted peonies, and iridescent rosebuds unravel beneath my feet. Foxgloves bloom like trumpets, playing a regal procession beside twinkling bluebells. As I journey deeper into the forest, fireflies circle me, illuminating my path. And then I see him. I blink. He's awfully familiar, but I can't place my finger on who he is. He's beautiful. A boy with white-blond hair and viridescent eyes. Where have I seen him before? "Hello, Lila," he says. I stumble back. "How do you know my name?" He's peculiar. So unbelievably enchanting. I'm enthralled by the sound of his voice alone. "Don't be scared. You're safe here. I wanted to bring you somewhere special. Somewhere where you can make the forest beautiful with your dance." My dance. Of course, my dance. Witchlight flickers in his eyes. This world is meant for me. A gift wrapped up in velvet petals and sweet perfumes.

Up in the thickets and caverns of the mountains, night falls as a thick wool blanket over everything. Mountain dark is sweet. Breezes blow with a clean smell, especially when there’s rain on the way. The forests release an organic smell of life, new sprouts of sassafras and privet, flowering laurel, and the damp layers of leaves and fallen logs, mushrooms sprinkled across their tops like freckles on a young girl’s nose. The trees sway above, their leaves rustling and dancing in the summer, pine needles and the evergreen cedars swishing when it’s cold.

A petal-strewn gravel path divides the garden into two symmetrical sections, with lush meadows on either side, flanked by cherry blossom trees. The tree branches stretch out to meet each other, forming a canopy of evergreen leaves and pink blossoms overhead and creating the dancing shadows on the grass that give the garden its name.

If am hurt evergreen mother earth hug my balance that I am carried like the waters and trees of calm ~

Evergreens were bereft leaves so wind did not shake them in B.C. Separated leaves from deciduous trees danced circles in the streets of Montreal.

The mystery of the evergreen marking the grave of the dead sun god is also perpetuated in the Christmas tree.

When you're fifteen, you can't make promises of a return to the before place. Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story. Linden, Palmetto, Evergreen, Decatur, Woodbine- this neighborhood began as a forest. And now the streets were named for the trees that once lived here.

He was like an evergreen next to a tree that transformed itself brilliantly every season

Mattie saw herself and Angela as the trees that grew out of cliffs and boulders above the ocean near Monterey—evergreen creatures, windswept, magnificent, twisty, gnarled pines growing out of the layers of rock, where maybe there had once been some nutrition, maybe there had once been soil from which the trees had sprung, but then the soil had blown away, and they still grew.

I didn’t have memories, new I made, this, beneath ancient evergreen Populus trees… Yes, evergreen Populus trees always are, yet with cold I’m not one that’s well known to spar… With gentle headstrongness I made my own path, with which I can get to the forest(, like Plath)… In forests, folk sparce are, yet all of the trees, growing like soldiers, to be many are free…

somewhere in your house—maybe on a little evergreen tree at a time far removed from Christmas. Get one of those adult coloring books with whimsical patterns. Paint your nails an offbeat color; you can paint your toenails if you don’t want to share such personal expression with the world. Draw something fun on the driveway with chalk, such as the giant chalk game of Chutes and Ladders one study participant reported creating. Blow bubbles on a break. None of this is life-changing of course, but when things are different, seeing these fancies can nudge us out of the mindless state that tends to characterize day-to-day life. Hours always march into the past, but at least they can carry a little whimsy with them as they whistle on their way.

When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way…The minute you get near humans, you lose all that… That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.’ – RAM DASS

It is only in winter that you can tell which trees are evergreen.

Europe lost many trees or their close relatives that today are only found native in the warm-temperate-subtropical ‘evergreen forests’ of south-eastern China or eastern North America (Combourieu-Nebout et al. 2015). These were largely replaced in Europe by trees of the temperate ‘mixed mesophytic forest’. Many taxa had already disappeared at the beginning of the Quaternary (e.g. Liquidambar, Meliosma, Pseudolarix false larch, Stewartia), while others survived longer (e.g. Liriodendron, Magnolia, Taxodium, Sequoia, Phellodendron cork tree, Tsuga, Carya) to vanish finally from Europe during the course of the early- or mid-Quaternary (Willis and McElwain 2014, Combourieu-Nebout et al. 2015, Birks and Tinner 2016).

Kathleen had intended to find a quiet place for them to sit undisturbed, but Devon surprised her by pulling her behind the Christmas tree. He drew her into the space beneath the stairs where heavy-laden evergreen branches obscured them from view. “What are you doing?” she asked in bemusement. Lights from hundreds of tiny candles danced in his eyes. “I have a gift for you.” Disconcerted, she said, “Oh, but…the family will exchange presents tomorrow morning.” “Unfortunately the presents I brought from London were lost in the accident.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he said, “This is the one thing I managed to keep. I’d rather give it to you privately, since I have nothing for the others.” Hesitantly she took the object from his open palm. It was a small, exquisite black cameo rimmed with pearls. A woman on a horse. “The woman is Athena,” Devon said. “According to myth, she invented the bridle and was the first ever to tame a horse.” Kathleen looked down at the gift in wonder. First the shawl…now this. Personal, beautiful, thoughtful things. No one had ever understood her taste so acutely. Damn him.

As he lights up, the sun is setting, turning the sky as many pastels as you see on the side of a rainbow trout. The reddest clouds are the fish cut open. Aspen trees are peaking with yellow. A wind comes up the draw, announced in advance by clapping aspen leaves, and then he can hear it take the pines around the house and he feels it on his cheek and it makes the end of his cigarette glow brighter. He takes a deep drag and looks down past the springhouse nested in orange willow branches. Up over the opposing hill he sees the snow on mountains west of Laramie. Another breath of wind comes up and starts the aspens chattering like nervous girls, and they catch the last low-angling rays of sun and flare. The dark tops of evergreens are red, almost bloody, and for a good thirty seconds he knows that the world is something altogether other than what it appears to be.

Ages before men had lived on the earth, there had been the creatures of the wilderness, and the holes of the rocks and the nests of the trees, and rain, frost, heat, dew, sunlight, and night, storm and calm, the honey of the wild flower and the instinct of the bee-all the beautiful and multiple forms of life with their inscrutable design. To know something of them and to love them was to be close to the kingdom of earth-perhaps to the greater kingdom of heaven. For whatever breathed and moved was a part of that creation. The coo of the dove, the lichen on the mossy rock, the mourn of a hunting wolf, and the murmur of the waterfall, the ever-green and growing tips of the spruces and the thunderbolts along the battlements of the heights-these one and all must be actuated by the Great Spirit-that incalculable thing in the universe that had produced man and soul.

In Colorado’s snow country, we also hear two evergreens. One near to us, a ponderosa pine living in our own time. Another, the redwood, sings from the distant past. In the ecological dissonance between these two trees there is also an opening to a void, a path to emptiness. The petrified stump, a stony piece of flotsam carrying the memory of the past, reminds us of Earth’s unnegotiable law. What exists today will not exist tomorrow. Climate change is one expression this ephemerality. All the climate has ever done is change: cadences and glissandos of temperature and rainfall, sometimes bending slowly, sometimes screeching in jolts. This is the neverstill of rocks, air, life, water. Next to the petrified wood, the ponderosa cries in a igneous wind, prey to onslaughts of beetles or drought, caught in the change that humans have wrought.