May 18, 2013 Heartbreakingly Beautiful, the Mulberry and the Catalpa

I am walking in the rain. The air is fragrant with honeysuckle and many flowers.  The rivers and lakes and ponds are full again after years of drought. There are fields of daisies, fields of yellow dandelions, roadsides of blue, purple, pink and white ragged robins. Red, pink and white poppies are planted in the medians of the highway.  The trees are bowing with the weight of water, full and rich with green.  The Mulberry trees are heavy with unripened fruit.

The purple catalpa has bloomed and the tall white blossomed catalpa is now blooming. It is sometimes called the catawba or the Indian fish bait tree. The sphinx moth lives only in this tree and the larvae are excellent bait for fish.  Ryan tells me that on his grandfather's farm in Mississippi, they had a catfish pond, ringed with catawba trees. All they had to do to fish, was  use a cane pole, bait the hook with the sphinx worm and catch a catfish for dinner.

There is a Greek myth about how the Mulberry fruit changed from white to red. The lovers, Pyramus and Thesbe were forbidden to marry and so they planned to meet secretly under the mulberry tree. Thesbe arrived first only to be frightened away by a lion who took her scarf in his mouth and stained it with the juice from the berries. When Pyramus arrived he found the red stained scarf and thought Thesbe to be dead. He took his sword and killed himself. When she returned and found him dead, Thesbe took the sword and joined her lover in death. Their mingled blood soaked into the soil and stained the white berries red forever.

(There actually are white, red and black varieties, the red being indigenous to North America.)

I broke off a low branch of the catalpa, stripped it of leaves, dipped it in root hormone and planted it on a sunny bank.
Monday will be Peter's birthday.  He is in the hospital suffering from the ravages of long mental illness.
I plant the tree in his honor.

In all cultures, the planting of a tree is believed to be an investment in life.

"He who plants a tree will live a long life." Marco Polo.