Trees

TREES. I love them. Especially when they are next to other trees.
Standing in a forest feels like being stood over kindly by a huddle of gentle mossy old men.
We love to park our house best near to trees too... and so we have. But not today.

Today I write from the antithesis of a forest clearing... our house is parked in an industrial estate, outside a diesel garage who are trying to fix the radiator. We thought it was just a small hole to mend, but after hours of wrestling the radiator out, its copper innards were revealed to have turned to paper, after 30 years of radiating.. and so it needs to be sent away and refurbished. Meanwhile we must stay here. We have hung all the curtains and are trying to pretend we are still in that forest clearing, so I shall tell you about our days with trees instead...



The photographs above were taken in a lovely forest park which we discovered on a walk back when we were in the orchard... there is of course a no overnight parking sign there too.. but we thought to try it for a night. And it was delightful. The most lovely day greeted us on waking and the birds sung their tiny songs for us all day, while I painted a tree on a clock (with trees out the window!) and Tui stained picture frames for the weekend ahead. We put up our sign again, and though it was not busy, a fair few walkers and dogs came past and chatted. We felt welcomed... the back door was open in the balmy weather and folks I think felt more able to come and peek... There was an art group visiting the woods who stopped to chat and tell us about a summer exhibition they were planning amongst the trees. Even the park warden was friendly, though he had to "log" our number plate in his daily council report, since we had spent the night there. We ate dinner on the logs outside in the evening and collected twigs for kindling before heading off to town for the next day's selling.



Back at the park and ride, which had been our home for a few weeks previously, we met some friendly fellow vehicle dwellers who became our neighbours for a while... Tracy and Troy are a mother and son living in their camper van and we have enjoyed saying good mornings to them by the water tap as their little dog races about happily. Tracy has begun a blog and I gave 9 year old Troy a drawing lesson in the back of our truck one day. He is home educated and a keen artist ... we had fun learning the proportions and structure of a face. They came with us on a wood hunting expedition too, tramping along the secret track that takes you from carpark to woodland ... and we brought back bagfuls of logs from a disintegrating forest walkway, made at some previous time by unknown passers by.

In the chinks between all the ups and downs and ins and outs of our life these last couple of weeks, I have painted and drawn and I have written more pages of my story, which I am beginning to love. I have sneaked to coffeehouses and curled up in a comfortable corner with headphones on, and managed to create an oasis of space in my head to allow the tale to be woven.
I shall be back here again soon with clock works and new journeys... and hopefully a sparkling new radiator.