#sycamore maple

[boschintegral-photo]

Sycamore Seeds

[samirafee]

#ACER PSEUDOPLATANUS - SYCAMORE MAPLE - BERGAHORN

@samirafee

[wiley-treehouse-gardens]

[mothmiso]

Lagodekhi (2) (3) (4) by Panegyrics of Granovetter

[nimilspike]

[lost-harts]

July 2023

[maybesimon]

what the fuck is a sycamore tree.

[furnituremontana]

Lift Console 21.5d x 36h x 95w

[call-jupiter]

sycamore tree snippet #14

from chapter 19: "Maple"

The first thing Lucy registered upon waking up is that she had woken up at all—something rather miraculous given how little sleep she got in the motel.

The second thing she registered was that she was not, in fact, in the motel anymore, and she figured that probably had a lot to do with how she’d managed to sleep for… an as yet undetermined length of time.

The third thing she registered was rope around her wrists and ankles binding her to a chair while an exceptionally displeased [woman] stared her down.

“What the hell is this?” Lucy asked, tugging on the binds and glaring up at [the woman] in a desperate attempt to mask her terror with indignation.

[gaytobymeres]

My brother is a tree surgeon but knows nothing about tree species (he knows what he needs to know about trees - he’s skilled and competent) and as a gardener/horticulturist/botanist it drives me up the wall when I ask ‘oh what did you chop down’ and he responds ‘a maple and a sycamore’ bro that clarifies very little. Or worse still ‘oh I dunno’ can you show me a leaf. A bud even. Sometimes even a bud scar is enough. Give me something to satisfy my curiosity

[mielcite]

last post im talking about p. racemosa not p. occidentalis or a. psuedoplatanus

[flowercrowncrip]

I’m officially booked in to get my first tattoo next week! It’s going to be a maple/ sycamore seed above my elbow and I’m really looking forward to it

Finding an accessible place with an artist whose work I like that also has a good reputation has been pretty difficult, but I’ve finally found somewhere that ticks all those boxes so I’m booked in on Friday.

The artist seems great and is happy for me to find a way to stay in my wheelchair – which I’m hoping shouldn’t be too difficult given I’m getting the tattoo on my upper arm

[bwlkins]

Crowley's newspaper

Maple lane post box becomes home to spider species not seen in 45 years

Job 8:13-15 So is the end of everyone who forgets God, and so shall the hope of the godless perish. His confidence is but a gossamer thread, his trust is a spider’s house. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall cling to it, but it shall not endure.

A spider’s house represents the shakiness, the uncertainty of someone's position when they live without God.

The newspaper depicts the exact same post box as the one next to which Aziraphale finished his conversation with the Metatron by departing with the "good news".

That may be a reference to Crowley's uncertainty:

But also, Crowley loses his home in Episode 1. And in Episode 6, Aziraphale loses his home as well.

That makes sense, but why the post box? I think it's their new home for now, their pillar to replace the one they lost.

They're not talking. They don't get a chance to talk. But LETTERS.

And then there's the maple.

Zacchaeus was a little man, and wanted to see Jesus, so he climbed a sycamore tree. Jesus looked up and said, “Hurry down, Zacchaeus, because I must stay in your house today.” The people started grumbling because Jesus was going to the home of a sinner.

He is known primarily for his faith in climbing a sycamore tree to see Jesus and also his generosity in giving away half of all he possessed.

The sycamore tree symbolises regeneration, a reference to someone who is spiritually reborn. Zacchaeus' regenerated heart caused him to make restitution and change his life in Jericho. The sycamore tree symbolizes the power of seeking spiritual enlightenment and the potential for personal transformation.

[ginandoldlace]

Autumn in Bournville' You have seen me use the phrase 'chocolate-box' to describe a beautiful cottage and in a recent 'Friday Five' I explained the term came from George Cadbury of Bournville who used pretty thatched cottages to decorate his chocolate boxes. So here's some scenes from the village that I previously shared a couple of years ago Pictures 1, 2 & 5 are of the beautiful Selly Manor, found in the heart of the village. This amazing, timber-crucked building dates back to at least 1327!! It was rescued from demolition in 1907 when George Cadbury, had it painstakingly dismantled, restored and moved to the centre of his Bournville village where the Cadbury Chocolate factory is today! Photo 3 is of the beautiful Rest House, situated right in the centre of the village and a few steps away from Selly Manor. Paid for by the Cadbury employees, it was built in 1913 as a gift to George Cadbury and his wife, Elizabeth to commemorate their silver wedding anniversary. The Rest House was inspired and based on a 17th century market hall in Dunster in Somerset. Today, it houses the visitor centre, full of photographs and information on the Cadbury family and a big section on the Bournville Carillon housing 48 bells, and ranks as one of the finest and largest instruments of its kind in Great Britain, which I've included as a bonus photo no 6! George Cadbury commissioned the Carillon as a gift to the Cadbury workers in 1906 after a visit to Bruges, Belgium. Photo 4 shows the lovely row of traditional shops, at the bottom of the green, including, a butcher's, a bakers, a florist and two cafes! The area is full of beautiful buildings where all the streets are named after trees, Laburnum, Acacia, Sycamore, and Willow to name a few and Selly Manor stands proudly on Maple Road! Hope you've enjoyed this view of Bournville, its history and my favourite chocolate maker, George Cadbury! Enjoy your day, it's very chilly but a beautiful sparkling blue sky is very welcome

[moonkissed-reverence]

Religiously: Chapter 6

Do you trust me?

Azriel took her chin softly between his thumb and forefinger, meeting her gaze. “You, my love, are a rare and precious gem, Kingslayer—he gave her a soft smile—and I will do everything in my power to protect you. Always. Even if you’re more than capable of protecting yourself.” He would. He vowed it to himself over and over again and now to her. Not only would he protect her with every fiber of his being but he would teach her how to protect herself as well.

Azriel found her hands once again and pulled her with him to stand. “We will figure this out. We have awareness and somewhat of a direction. But first things first, you need to train.”

~~~

Hand in hand, they made their way deeper through the half dozen gardens that sprawled the vast land. As they neared the edge of the ancient forest that sat at the northern edge of the property, the gardens became a bit more wild and untamed. They passed a small pond leading to a stream which they followed to a clearing. Lush trees stood scattered about and a hedgerow of unruly lilac sat along the eastern edge. The manor sat behind them now in the distance.

“It’s so spacious out here. These trees are enormous!” Elain said as she looked around wide eyed. Massive sycamores and maples, willows and various fruit trees.

“This is the edge of the property. I quite enjoy it out here, I thought you might too.”

Azriel pulled her into his embrace and wrapped his arms around her in a cocoon of warmth. She tightened her hold on him and rested her cheek upon his chest. They stood that way for a few sacred moments, a promise of safety and love and trust.

They found each other's lips for a long overdue passionate kiss before Azriel twirled Elain from his arms. “Manifest your vines, love.”

Elain flustered, straightening. “I—I don’t know how. I’ve never done it intentionally,” she said, knitting her brows and biting her lip.

“What do you do when you summon a vision or when you tracked the Suriel?” Azriel asked curiously.

Elain cleared her throat. “I, um…I haven’t done that in a long time...” She fidgeted with her dress but continued slowly, “I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it…I guess it just came naturally…” She chewed her lip in contemplation.

“Sweetheart, just relax. There’s no pressure. I’m right here with you. Clear your mind, trust yourself and your instincts. Focus on your intention and let go.” His words a soft breeze of encouragement.

Elain shook out her hands, squared her shoulders, sucked a deep breath in, then out and closed her eyes, pulling her focus inward…towards—towards that soft shimmering light glowing beneath the surface. Her magic. Her power. “Oh, gods…” She breathed softly to herself, eyes still shut as she felt her power thrum gently through her.

A few moments passed in silence as nothing happened.

But then slowly, a single tendril of ivy crept along the ground towards him, slowly snaking its way up his boot and began winding around his leg. “Well done, my love.”

Elain blinked open her eyes—as they widened a smile lit up her face. She then wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips in concentration as another, slightly thicker vine made its way up Azriel’s other leg nearing his waist.

“If you keep it up, I’ll be completely tangled in ivy soon…and at your very mercy, Elain.” He gave her a roguish grin as Elain closed the space between them. She placed her hands on his chest, “Is that right my fearsome spymaster? Would you like to be at my mercy?” She smiled sweetly up at him.

He pulled her in closer, gripping her chin gently between his fingers with a soft stroke of his thumb, “I—Elain, my love, my eternal sunshine—am already and always, completely and unequivocally at your mercy.”

He kissed her softly, gently, tenderly at first until she ran her hand up his neck, gripping his hair at the nape, deepening the kiss. Elain nipped at his bottom lip before sucking it between her lips, running her tongue over its plushness. Azriel groaned upon her lips then caressed a breast a bit roughly as they began devouring each other alone at the edge of wood.

Read the rest here / Catch up here ✨

[sassenach77yle]

||COUNTDOWN || SEASON 4 EPISODE 03 || THE FALSE BRIDE ||

#83daysofoutlander☆

We climbed a granite ledge, thick with moss and lichen, wet with the omnipresent flow of water, then followed the path of a descending freshet, brushing aside long grass that pulled at our legs, dodging the drooping branches of mountain laurel and the thick-leaved rhododendrons. Wonders sprang up by my feet, small orchids and brilliant fungi, trembling and shiny as jellies, shimmering red and black on fallen tree trunks. Dragonflies hung over the water, jewels immobile in the air, vanishing in mist. I felt dazed with abundance, ravished by beauty. Jamie’s face bore the dream-stunned look of a man who knows himself sleeping, but does not wish to wake. Paradoxically, the better I felt, the worse I felt, too; desperately happy—and desperately afraid. This was his place, and surely he felt it as well as I. In early afternoon we stopped to rest and drink from a small spring at the edge of a natural clearing. The ground beneath the maple trees was covered with a thick carpet of dark green leaves, among which I caught a sudden telltale flash of red. “Wild strawberries!” I said with delight. The berries were dark red and tiny, about the size of my thumb joint. By the standards of modern horticulture, they would have been too tart, nearly bitter, but eaten with a meal consisting of half-cooked cold bear meat and rock-hard corn dodgers, they were delicious—fresh explosions of flavor in my mouth; pinpricks of sweetness on my tongue. I gathered handfuls in my cloak, not caring for stains—what was a little strawberry juice among the stains of pine pitch, soot, leaf smudges and simple dirt? By the time I had finished, my fingers were sticky and pungent with juice, my stomach was comfortably full, and the inside of my mouth felt as though it had been sandpapered, from the tartly acid taste of the berries. Still, I couldn’t resist reaching for just one more. Jamie leaned his back against a sycamore, eyelids half lowered against the dazzle of afternoon sun. The little clearing held light like a cup, still and limpid.

“What d’ye think of this place, Sassenach?” he asked. “I think it’s beautiful. Don’t you?”

He nodded, looking down between the trees, where a gentle slope full of wild hay and timothy fell away and rose again in a line of willows that fringed the distant river. “I am thinking,” Jamie said, a little awkwardly. “There is the spring here in the wood. That meadow below—” He waved a hand toward the scrim of alders that screened the ridge from the grassy slope. “It would do for a few beasts at first, and then the land nearer the river might be cleared and put in crops. The rise of the land here is good for drainage. And here, see …” Caught by visions, he rose to his feet, pointing. I looked carefully; to me, the place seemed little different from any of the steep wooded slopes and grassy coves through which we had wandered for the last couple of days. But to Jamie, with his farmer’s eye, houses and stock pens and fields sprang up like fairy mushrooms in the shadows of the trees. Happiness was sticking out all over him, like porcupine quills. My heart felt like lead in my chest. “You’re thinking we might settle here, then? Take the Governor’s offer?” He looked at me, stopping abruptly in his speculations. “We might,” he said. “If—” He broke off and looked sideways at me. Sun-reddened as he was, I couldn’t tell whether he was flushed with sun or shyness.

“D’ye believe in signs at all, Sassenach?”

“What sorts of signs?” I asked guardedly. In answer, he bent, plucked a sprig from the ground, and dropped it into my hand—the dark green leaves like small round Chinese fans, a pure white flower on a slender stem, and on another a half-ripe berry, its shoulders pale with shade, blushing crimson at the tip.

“This. It’s ours, d’ye see?” he said. “Ours?” “The Frasers’, I mean,” he explained. One large, blunt finger gently prodded the berry. “Strawberries ha’ always been the emblem of the clan—it’s what the name meant, to start with, when a Monsieur Fréselière came across from France wi’ King William that was—and took hold of land in the Scottish mountains for his trouble.”

King William that was. William the Conqueror, that was. Perhaps not the oldest of the Highland clans, the Frasers had still a distinguished heritage. “Warriors from the start, were you?” “And farmers, too.” The doubt in his eyes was fading into a smile. I didn’t say what I was thinking, but I knew well enough that the thought must lie in his mind as well. There was no more of clan Fraser save scattered fragments, those who had survived by flight, by stratagem or luck. The clans had been smashed at Culloden, their chieftains slaughtered in battle or murdered by law. Yet here he stood, tall and straight in his plaid, the dark steel of a Highland dirk by his side. Warrior and farmer both. And if the soil beneath his feet was not that of Scotland, it was free air that he breathed—and a mountain wind that stirred his hair, lifting copper strands to the summer sun. I smiled up at him, fighting back my growing dismay.

“Fréselière, eh? Mr. Strawberry?

He grew them, did he, or was he only fond of eating them?” “Either or both,” he said dryly, “or it was maybe only that he was redheided, aye?” I laughed, and he hunkered down beside me, unpinning his plaid.

“It’s a rare plant,” he said, touching the sprig in my open hand. “Flowers, fruit and leaves all together at the one time. The white flowers are for honor, and red fruit for courage—and the green leaves are for constancy.”

My throat felt tight as I looked at him. “They got that one right,” I said. He caught my hand in his own, squeezing my fingers around the tiny stem.

“And the fruit is the shape of a heart,” he said softly, and bent to kiss me.

The tears were near the surface; at least I had a good excuse for the one that oozed free. He dabbed it away, then stood up and pulled his belt loose, letting the plaid fall in folds around his feet. Then he stripped off shirt and breeks and smiled down at me, naked. “There’s no one here,” he said. “No one but us.” I would have said this seemed no reason, but I felt what it was he meant. We had been for days surrounded by vastness and threat, the wilderness no farther away than the pale circle of our fire. Yet here, we were alone together, part and parcel of the place, with no need in broad daylight to hold the wilderness at bay. “In the old days, men would do this, to give fertility to the fields,” he said, giving me a hand to rise. “I don’t see any fields.” And wasn’t sure whether to hope I never would. Nonetheless, I skimmed off my buckskin shirt, and pulled loose the knot of my makeshift brassiere. He eyed me with appreciation. “Well, no doubt I shall have to cut down a few trees first, but that can wait, aye?”

We made a bed of plaid and cloaks, and lay down upon it naked, skin to skin among the yellow grasses and the scent of balsam and wild strawberries. We touched each other for what might have been a very long time or no time at all, together in the garden of earthly delight. I forced away the thoughts that had plagued me up the mountain, determined only to share his joy for as long as it lasted. I grasped him tight and he breathed in deep and pressed himself hard into my hand. “And what would Eden be without a serpent?” I murmured, fingers stroking. His eyes creased into blue triangles, so close I could see the black of his pupils. “And will ye eat wi’ me, then, mo chridhe? Of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil?” I put out the tip of my tongue and drew it along his lower lip in answer. He shivered under my fingers, though the air was warm and sweet. “Je suis prest,” I said. “Monsieur Fréselière.” His head bent and his mouth fastened on my nipple, swollen as one of the tiny ripe berries. “Madame Fréselière,” he whispered back. “Je suis à votre service.” And then we shared the fruit and flowers, and the green leaves covering all.

16 THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS