Have a Seat ~ Please Be Seated ~ Take A Seat...You Pick

Little garden angel... taking a seat on a tree stump...repurposing. (Jackson's garden, Portsmouth)

"Surely ruminating and lolling, squandering slivers of time as you ponder on this or that plant; perching about the place on seats chosen for their essential and individual quality, are other whole aspects of being a gardener. Why shouldn't we? We sit in other people's gardens, why not in our own." ~ Mirabel Osler, The Garden Bench

Tree stumps make better seats than ladders. There is a story behind that statement, filled with angst and pain and humiliation... a story with a moral as well. I won't bore you with the details except to warn all you klutzy people out there (I include myself in this description and I know my daughter would include me as well.)...if you want to look over into your neighbor's yard because you hear a noise there and there is a six foot wooden fence in your way and a pine tree stump available to stand on.. think twice or thrice. Not minding your own business may end up with a badly sprained ankle as you twist your foot trying to quickly step down....remember we are all klutzes here... and you WILL end up on the ground, crawling on all fours in excruciating pain, back to the patio door and into the house where you will then pull yourself up next to the counter, hop on one foot and pray that your teenage daughter has not emptied the ice maker. You will end up in the orthopedic surgeon's office where you will sit for no less than three hours before they x-ray your ankle and another two hours before they get you fitted with the most ugly and cumbersome black boot to stabilize the ankle. This boot will not fit under your pants; this boot over your pants forces the leg to ride up and bunch unattractively at your knee, so that you look as if you were trying to wear some sort of balloon on that leg. And walking in it.... did I not tell them it was being a klutz that got me into this in the first place? Do they really think a genuine klutz can walk in this... much less drive a car with one on? Oh, I forgot to tell you that it was the right foot, the driving pedal foot, no less. The swelling will go down in two weeks, the bruise that came up will take three and all because I wanted to look over into the neighbor's back yard. And you want to know something really disappointing? There was nothing there. Nope. Nothing to go with that weird screeching sound... nada... no one...no child... no animal... completely empty. The moral is of course... next time, simply use the gate...or better yet, take a seat on that stump and let it go.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden, 2006... a most unusual seat to take... under the spreading...
well, I don't know what kind of tree it was... huge and old and visited by many, many people who left their marks.

The huge "C" shaped trunk made a lovely place for Nyssa to lounge.

Every time I see these pictures it reminds me of the Longfellow poem that starts out... "Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands...."; though I don't think this was a chestnut tree. While the branches were large and draping all the way to the ground and the trunk hidden like a secret garden resting place... it wasn't a weeping willow either. That was one thing about the garden in Brooklyn, the specimens and trees were not always marked will with their names. I thought the view in black and white was remarkable as it brings out all the graffiti and markings people have left through the years. The tree wears its scars proudly and has managed to survive and thrive in spite of humans.

Carmi's theme this week is "take a seat" so I combined it with the "trees" from last week... taking a seat in and on a tree.

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Carmi's theme ~ "take a seat"