[Zig]

...or, sic transit gloria mundi.

You know, just when you think there are are areas of untouchable beauty or safety in one's life...an unforeseen hand comes along:

Some of you remember these trees?
I may have gone on about them, overshot them, bored several viewers with repeated treatments of them.
Yet this was a special place for me.
You may remember that this is what they looked like:





Now:
These trees had grown, minded their own business, and given shade to browsing creatures of the English landscape for many years.
At least 2 of them had been there since before the United States was even a country.
Even in their death, they have given much pleasure with their certain statuesque beauty.

More to the point, Zig liked them.

And now this is all that's left of them.
It's not the trees really.
It's the fact that things you think will always be there, suddenly aren't, and no-one sings of their passage.





I don't like Mondays.

[guerito]

It's the fact that things you think will always be there, suddenly aren't, and no-one sings of their passage.

Exactly what I thought when our local pub closed...

[Toad]

Gasp!! I shall mourn this tree and I shall miss your photos of it...

[Irma]

I am very sorry for this, Zig.

I understand you well, it is a great loss.

[matthew]

That's really sad. I have expereinced similar losses of favourite places, and it's true that it's hard to appreciate something until it's not there any more. At least in this wasn't one of the "one day I'll stop and..." cases, and you do have the photos that you'd wanted to take of it. Not all of them, I'm sure -- but at least you have some of them.

[Zig]

Thank you(Zig wipes eyes). True, matthew, at least there are the extant pics: and maybe I can go down to the local newspaper and offer the pics and a story/feature on the "environmental aspect" of the fact. (This is Stroud, and they've got that combined ethos of being both middle-class "Muesli belt" and also self-styled greener than the Incredible Hulk's armpit.)

Irma, I forgot to say: that last photo is with the telephoto at f4: not much of the bokeh you were asking for, but a start!

[Keith Alan]

Same exact thing happened to me with a tree.

Was also glad to have my pictures already.

[Zig]

Sorry to hear that Keith..

I know we're not actually experiencing Amazonian-scale deforestation here, and I'm no Gaia-one-world treehugger who believes that trees are part of my Eternal Being/Inner Child/Karmic Awareness/etc;...but not nice nonetheless.

[Janika]

I know we have some law that forces us to plant 2 trees in place of every tree cut out, but still, it takes time to grow a beauty like that.

[aine-caitlin]

It's not the trees really.
It's the fact that things you think will always be there, suddenly aren't, and no-one sings of their passage.

Yes they do:

"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?"
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down....."

I'm so sorry about your trees. I understand this meant a lot to you. Thank goodness you have your photographs of them and they won't become just a fading memory someday.

[NT73]

Life is tough. I miss my landscape, but some bright young planning committee has designated houses on it.
I now have to look at a wall with windows and a burglar alarm box.
Twas a pretty tree though.

[wulinka]

In Hefei this happens to buildings all the time, it just reminds you that nothing is forever, although I think we tend to feel that trees, especialoy old ones will be there forever.


I like your shots though!

uli