The black locust tree umbrellas the yard behind the house except at the edges. The lawn slopes down, as the house is raised above the high water table; it makes mowing with the rider a bit tricky. At the corner itself, there is a maple tree that was transplanted early in the Spring. There is purpose in planting it there as it will suck up plenty of water and also act as a screen for the only close neighbor whose house is a straight line out from the corner.
A little to the right of it and up the slope are one of the ginkgo trees, planted in 2012 as a sapling, and the peony raised bed, put in in 2013. Up closer, on the patio, you will see an amalgamation of plants that get put outside in the summer and are brought in in fall. These include two fair-sized grapefruit trees started from seeds that have yet to bloom or bear fruit; a five-year old rosemary plant; a same-aged lemon thyme; one struggling indeterminate houseplant, and one scraggly catnip that’s been mauled repeatedly.
Outside of that perimeter is a mown field and free fields. You can’t see it in the photo, but the wind is blowing and the leaves are moving. You can’t hear it in the photo, but the birds are making noise and there is the sound of heavy equipment in the distance. Since the fracking companies ran their pipeline down the roads last year which provide natural gas for heating, a rash of new homes are being built around the area. Intermittently, squids on Harleys roar by in gangs, as the road has little traffic (other than them and people on bikes) and is a straightaway between the stop signs at the intersections over a mile apart.
Green textures take shape
as lens adjusts, frame by frame –
living journaled joy.
Peter Frankis is today’s host of dVerse. Peter says:
•Take a photo of the view out your window
•Write a poem about it – what do you see, what’s missing, what don’t you see when you look out the window? what’s changed since this time last year?
I love how you describe the view from your window, Lisa. I also enjoy the context and background that you provide, such as the noises we cannot hear or the full picture we cannot see beyond like with the free fields and the wind, as you’ve mentioned. This is a fantastic and raw piece of prose. I also love the haiku at the end; I adore the imagery it provides in two different views: the one we see from the window, and the one we see through the lens of the camera.
Excellent take on the prompt!
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Thank you, Lucy! Glad you enjoyed it.
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Very nice greenery. Gingko is top! Nicely taking shape.
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Thank you, Ricardo.
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I like the way you pan out, as if this is a movie – from close up to kids on harleys – great sense of expansion.
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Thank you, Sarah.
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A wonderful description of your world. I was interested in the mention of fracking, since it’s met with much conjecture in other places. I believe in Oklahoma they blame it for the increase in earthquakes! Thank you for sharing your world. I enjoyed every bit of it.
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Thanks much, Beverly. Fracking is wrong every which way, including inciting earthquakes. I hate the fact that most everybody on this road now has a yellow post in front of their house meaning they are hooked up to the pipeline. What may be most depressing is that my son told me that when they shut down the huge coal-fed electric power plant last year here, they now pump in electricity generated by fracking 😦
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Even the word “fracking” sounds obscene. They claim it’s safe. They probably lie. Your Haibun is lovely, with depth and deft touches; like a free tour, what you can see, and we can’t without your dynamic words.
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Thank you, Glenn, my pleasure.
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This is a lovely haibun, taking us progressively out from the shade into the garden and then the world beyond. I particularly liked the last stanza – ‘you can’t see this from the photo…’ – into what’s changing in the landscape – new houses etc. And the haiku is a different take on your view out the window. Thanks for sharing your view today.
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Thank you, Peter.
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I can see the trees and hear the sounds from your haibun. Too bad fracking can change the landscape. Enjoyed this view of your backyard!
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Thank you very much, Grace.
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Lovely writing, Lisa. And I love your backyard!
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Thank you, Susan. It’s nice to look out on it.
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Great backyard, majestic tree and sweet haiku Your tale of the bikers rumbling through reminding me of a song line… “pave paradise and put in a parking lot.”
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Thank you. In this case put in a drag strip 😉
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Wah!! 😡😠
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I had something similar happen once in a house I was in — opened the road to a truck route behind our homes. Should be some kind of ordinance to prevent that kind of noise pollution from ruining residential neighborhoods, but no one in ‘city hall’ cared one bit.
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Progress always seems to get the green light and peace be damned.
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Yep and tax paying homeowners get the shaft.
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Very nice Lisa. Looks like you have some good privacy in the back yard. Do the Harleys rattle your windows??
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No but they do rattle my eardrums!
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Ha… I can imagine!!
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That is a great description Lisa…sounds like a screen play.
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Why thank you 🙂
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I thought it was a story at the very first
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I like the way the indistinct photo echoes the indistinct future. Who knows what will change with the rash of housing?
By the way, does a locust tree have leaves like mimosa, compounds of thirty or so small leaflets like fishbones? And does it have spikes on the trunk and the branches like the crown of thorns?
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Thank you, Jane. This one has the leaves like mimosa, but no spikes or thorns. I’m 99% sure this is a black locust but it might be a honey locust or other variety. I’m not a tree expert.
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Nobody seems to know what two of the trees out here are. They’re not acacias, too many leaf segments and they don’t produce flowers, just green catkins that the bees love. One of them has real spikes in it up to 4″ long around the trunk and along the main branches. The other one has no spikes. The leaves are like mimosa.. I wondered if it might be a type of locust. It could be a type of mimosa of course…
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Sorry, just found your comment in spam folder. It may be a non-native transplantee? I know that my grapefruit trees have vicious spikes on the trunk.
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I did some more research looking at non-native varieties of mimosa as it doesn’t look like acacia, which is what the former owner of the place thought. Turns out it’s a Mimosa Hostilis and is native to Brazil and has colonised the Amazonian rainforest. What it’s doing here and how it’s thriving in this climate I can’t imagine!
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Aha!
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sounds like a natures paradise! you’ve described it well 🙂
I’ve never minded the roar of Harleys but the fracking with play on my mind
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Thanks, Kate. Maybe age has made my ears more sensitive? The fracking has a toxic ripple effect and yes it does play on my mind.
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ouch but it does sound like you are very settled there … so maybe install a small water feature to disguise the sound?
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Good idea. Once upon a time I had an idea for a pond near the house that would be fed by the runoff from the roof.
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something like that or here we can get cheap solar powered states that trickle thru … any sound! You can work it out or even chimes 🙂
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A haibun was a good choice for your view, Lisa, the best vehicle for plenty of detail. Such a fertile spot, too, with a great variety of trees and plants. I’d never heard of a black locust tree or seen a gingko tree, but I am familiar with your beautiful peonies from a previous poem. It must smell amazing out there too. You’ve appealed to all the senses, including the noise of birds and heavy equipment, and I love the way you zoom out to include what’s out of frame.. The haiku is a little landscape in green!
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Thank you very much, Kim.
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I like your detailed description of the plants and of the sights and sounds the photo doesn’t show.
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Glad you enjoyed it, Suzanne, thank you.
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You’ve created a wonderful oasis, and I love that you moved outside the frame and included the sounds and the surrounding landscape. (K)
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Thanks, K.
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This haibun makes me think that writing, as prose, the view out the window (out each window?) is an exercise that we should all do several times a year. Wonderfully centering and stilling.
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Alexandra, I like that idea very much. I went to each window and took a picture and chose the one that had a story I wanted to tell about it, but each window had a story to tell. Glad you connected with this one.
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What a scene you’ve captured- I can hear those Harleys. There is nothing like that sound- we used to own one.
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Thanks, Linda!
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If you wanted to take a photo and then paint a picture with words, you succeeded wonderfully. Fun read….I enjoyed it.
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Glad you enjoyed it, Bill, thank you.
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🙂
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Very amazing Haibun, I love how lens adjusts ‘frame by frame’ very much like your description, it expands.. Lovely and clever writeup, Lisa 🙂
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Thank you, Jay 🙂
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I’m so happy to read your description Lisa. Are the Peonies doing well? I find looking out my window to be very calming as I sense that you do too ☺️
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🙂 They are still alive. The lilies, however….. only the light pink and white ones bloomed 😦
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