My first Liebster Award nominee has got her response underway! Kay McKenzie Cooke from Dunedin, New Zealand has posted answers to my first two questions. It was great reading what she shared and I felt very honoured that Kay who was born and raised in Southland called me a Southlander – a rare privilege indeed. Thank you Kay!
Kay shared this personal story and I found it very powerful:
My son once said while travelling, that if he wanted to feel ‘at home’ in a strange place, he’d look for the oldest tree he could find, and sit by it to ground himself and gather in a sense of ‘place’.
Which made me think about trees and their significance to me, to us…
Looking through Nigel’s photo archive I found these photos showing our appreciation and enjoyment of trees. These trees have no particular claim to fame, they’re ordinary albeit massive willows in the Queenstown Lakes area of the South Island – we lived in Queenstown at the time – years ago now 🙂
You can click on this photo to enlarge if you wish
It felt really special to be there in this beautiful light on that particular day. We walked along the path through the dappled light, wandering further before eventually retracing our steps.
My first memory of a particular colour and a particular tree are one and the same – a beautiful BIG fig tree in our personal home orchard when my Dad was an orchardist. In the summer it had big branches reaching up high and a dense green canopy of fig leaves so that the whole space under the canopy glowed green. To stand in that space was like being in my own enchanted world! The tree also produced copious amounts of delicious figs. The memory of the fig tree is very special to me 🙂
Text by Liz, photos by us both; Exploring Colour (2020)
That’s a great tunnelish avenue along the trees in the first photo. I’ve only been to Queenstown once, but the photo reminded me of another place with wonderful avenues of trees, in Queens Park in Invercargill. Do you know it?
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Extremely well and I’ve posted a lot of photos from there including this one from The Stumpery 🙂 https://exploringcolour.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/inv_stumpery_painted_rocks.jpg
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Our two eldest granddaughters, The Elf and The Sprout, are very fond of finding and exchanging painted stones in a local park called Fernglen, and we think it’s a wonderful idea!
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That’s a great question to answer, Liz. Old trees often fill my mind with a sense of fulness. I also keep thinking about the stories that could tell. Stories of animals and birds and probably other beings that visit the tree. Old, huge trees take me to a land of the lord of the rings.. 🙂
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I’d love to go there .. oh wait! I live in the land of the lord of the rings 🙂
Thanks for the reminder which made me think of some of the lovely lotr-type landscapes I’ve experienced including beautiful native forest!
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That’s the first thought that came to my mind when I wrote- lord of the rings land . That’s where you are… 🙂
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I love trees. They come in so many interesting shapes, provide homes for countless species, clean our atmosphere, and even give us a glimpse into historic weather patterns. They are truly a beautiful part of Creation.
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They do so much yet we give them precious little credit for it and prefer to admire our own constructions with their limited function and no beauty. Some trees even give us fruits and nuts in addition to their other contributions!
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Wow .. lovely shots, Liz. I really like the arching boughs and light and shadow play. And you have both made me smile today. Smiling back at you! 🙂
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Wonderful .. thank you!
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What a beautiful response to my first answers. I love those photos! I should recognise those trees and I kinda do. They may have been tidied up a bit more in these more recent years.Robert (who grew up in Queenstown wii no doubt know where they are, or were? I’ll ask him.
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