XXXV

Not strictly a tree but there are little ones in the background.

XXXIV

Appears to be mistletoe on a london plane... neat

XXXIII

Even those not paying attention will be astute enough to note that this is not 'my' (late) tree. It is in fact a very robust eucalyptus outside Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

XXXII

In lieu of a tree stump picture another tree at UCLA, which seems to actually be very well endowed in the tree department...

XXXI

In LA for the 19th International C. elegans meeting.

I have extra tree pictures enough to post one a day for the next year, but thought I'd try and keep on a more positive note, and instead while here post a picture a day of the many attractive trees on the UCLA campus.

XXX

Two pictures today, as I get ready to head off to LA for work, not quite sure what I'm going to do with this project for the next five days, hard to believe I've been doing this for 30 days already...

On a Completely Different Note

On another note, there's nothing like a freshly sharpened chainsaw. Typically mine are indeed nothing like freshly sharpened, but I virtuously did so in time to slab this Y hopefully for a base under a marble coffee table top, just visible in the back. The base almost didn't make it through Sandy, but as a precaution I moved it inside before this tree fell on its former location (and my car). The contrast between the 13in quarter bar on my Craftsman, and the 36in bar on my brother's Stihl is slightly comical.

XXIX

 

Entirely aside from the fact that I'm still pissed as hell about this I'll admit that just from an artistic perspective the discipline of going and taking a picture of the same subject every day for this long has been a good one...

XXVIII

XXVII

XXVI

Empty Sky with Tree Stump

XXV

XXIV

XXIII

XXII

Better a wrecked life than a life so aimless,

     Better a wrecked life than a life so soft;

The ominous west glooms thundering, with its fire
                Lit aloft.

Christina Rossetti, Pastime 

XX and XXI

I failed in my daily post for the good reason of being at a very beautiful wedding. We have then two days in one. Below, inspecting the logs that came to Puffin, looks like about half of one of the two log trucks that were filled. I've been wondering to myself when I'm going to give up on these posts. How may pictures can you take of a tree stump? no The answer in part is I think I need to do this till I know what to say about the whole thing, till I have a conclusion. Hasn't happened yet.

XIX

XVIII

XVII

XVI

Vigil: Day XV

Well, there you have it.
All I can say is if you give a shit do your best to see anything put on the site go out of business.

Vigil: Day XIV

He was a genuine natural mystic, one of those who live on the border of fairyland. But he was perhaps the first to realize how often the boundary of fairyland runs through a crowded city. Twenty feet from him (for he was very short-sighted) the red and white and yellow suns of the gas-lights thronged and melted into each other like an orchard of fiery trees, the beginning of the woods of elf land.
G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Vigil: Day XIII

Vigil: Day XII

It would seem the execution was called on account of rain.

Vigil: Day XI

Vigil: Day X

I'm told Friday is the day.

And in a way I'm yearning
To be done with all this measuring of truth.
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
And anyway I told the truth
And I'm not afraid to die.  

Nick Cave The Mercy Seat

Vigil: Day IX

I imagine taking good HDR photos takes a bit of practice. Timing the shots to avoid moving cars would be a start...

Is money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down ancient and venerable buildings for money that a few square yards of dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it's nobody's business to see to it or mend it.
William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art

Vigil: Day VIII

So I started this series of posts with the somewhat pretentious intention to contrast the tree death watch with the inanity of my day to day worries, but I find I've become bored, not with the death watch, but with my day to day inanities, which is probably a good sign. They are suspended until further notice. 

 

 A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the Decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture.

G. K. Chesterton, A Defense of Rash Vows

Vigil: Day VII

Still there.

 

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
 Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Vigil: Day VI

I'm in Massachusetts for the wedding of my good friend Maria, a beautiful joyful occasion. So this picture was taken Friday. It puts an odd angle on this vigil, that while still making it I don't really know if it is over.

The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.
 Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller