Hail the Mighty Oak

Latvian song at Summer Solstice in honor of the Oak Tree.

Comment by nauriss from 4 years ago:

 Before the lyrics, I’ll try to explain a few words:

Līgo - sway (name of the first day of Midsummer) Jānis - Diety of fire (name of the second day of Midsummer) (just in plural - Jāņi) Oak tree, oak tree, Your big width, Three days sun came, Yet couldn’t come. Oak tree, oak tree, Your big bushiness, Three days Partridge came, Yet couldn’t come. Oak tree, oak tree, Your big greatness, Daughters/Girls came singing, While breaking branches for the flowers crowns. Oak tree, oak tree, Your big eld, I was born, found you, I will die, you will stay. Gather along children of Jānis, Under the bushy oak tree, Under the bushy oak tree, There’s the Jānis’ place of honor.

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Glassmine Falls overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway

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"If you believe the earth is sacred, you have to do something to stop greedy and stupid people from destroying the very life-support systems that sustain us." 

- Starhawk, from her invitation to her 75th birthday celebration June 17, 2026.

A very wonderful book, The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl, offers some great words about oak trees.

"At the base of each new tree, Haywood sets a five-gallon bucket with a hole he drilled into the bottom. This was my mother's approach for keeping young plants alive, a poor man's drip-irrigation system. The slow release of water allows the tree's roots time to take up moisture. As it grows, Haywood moved the bucket farther out, coaxing the roots to reach, giving them a reason to set themselves firmly into the earth. Once a tree is well established, it's time to plant another.

and

"...more and more I ponder words like bounty and replete and enough. I think of what we are losing from this world and of what we will leave behind when we ourselves are lost. The trees. the stories. The people who love us and who know we love them, who will carry our love into the world after we are gone."

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Art in Bloom - Alchemy of Clay blog has some photos each day for this year's display of art with floral arrangements at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts 

 

Tuesday's treasures

 

From the internet

Elizabeth, Mary and John on a lunch trip with the Lakeview Center van..."Van Clan"

More seniors on Van Clan trip.

So glad someone posted these on Facebook. I do miss sitting at a big round table for lunch in the Lakeview Center's dining room...the downstairs was damaged in Hurricane Helene so it's now just a pick-up site for boxed lunches daily...until there's a trip to a restaurant.

Not many Seniors doing the local slide near Brevard...and it's really cold water these days. But just wait...there will soon be many people in line to go down Sliding Rock into the pool below.

Do you know your oaks? The bark is also helpful for some of these...and I admit to only knowing a few myself.

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Meanwhile, the YouTube capture of the hostage taking of 12 demonstrators in the Mediterranean  Sea outside of Gaza by Israeli forces.

Toward the end of the video is this posting, probably by Israeli press since all the 12 had thrown their phones overboard and there were details of a soldier handing everyone sandwiches and water bottles.

Greta Thunberg receiving a sandwich after her capture by Israeli forces.

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In my life, I discovered something interesting. While panting after the first minute of cardio exercise (marching in place to a video) I stuck the pulse-oximeter on my finger, to see my heart rate. Surprised to see it was only 81, no where near the 90s that I'd had several months ago. I was panting away, but my heart was beating at a pretty normal rate, not strained.

I'll have a question about that for pulmonology soon...I did just turn in 2 lab cups of spit to be examined to see if any more (or the same) bugs are in my lungs. So for now I'll try to get up to 5 minutes of cardio no matter how much I'm puffing away. (I'm still at around 3 minutes after just a few tries.) It's a long way to 30 minutes, isn't it?

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Today's quote:

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set. -Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)

Today's pottery

Living under the oak trees

These wonderful trees are in the midst of dropping their bombs right now.
When the acorns hit a garage roof, or the roof of a car, there's a much louder boom than when they hit the cement, which is still louder than when they hit grass and dirt.

Photo by William Snape

So outside my windows there's a constant barrage of artillery landing all over the place.  Noisy bunch of acorns.  Haven't seen the squirrels.  But then I'm looking at the computer, and just hearing the ratta tat tat outside the open windows.

When I'm at the tailgate market in Black Mountain, guess what kind of tree is dropping those huge acorns on our heads!



What trees do you live beneath?