I open the doors to a beautiful fresh morning, a faint chill in the air that is as sweet and clear as a June morning can be after a day of gentle rain.........you know, that lovely promise when the flowers are all drenched and happy and you know you won't have to run around with the watering hose saving all the pots from dehydration, at least for the next twenty-four hours.

Callie and I take sustenance in the first cup of morning coffee, out the back, sitting on the blue bench, happy with the new day  but averting my eyes from  the remains of the beautiful birch that the neighbour had sliced at the knees, piling all the beautiful branches against my sweet pea fence.

A tall and elegant tree, clothed in beautiful white birch bark and reminiscent of the gorgeous native costume that the lady of the house wears at First Nation celebrations....

I shake my head and say a little prayer for beauty destroyed......

This is not going to be a sunny day.  Already the clouds gather and there is the promise of more rain, but that's quite welcome in June - a sure defense against the threat of wild fires in dry forests.  The waters in the Similkameen have receded since flood time, making room for summer rains and a nice flow for the usual river rafters.....

Breakfast over I eye two very black bananas sitting in an empty fruit basket, and think about a batch of warm muffins - I think it's going to be a perfect day for baking!  Maybe a dozen scones to tuck into the freezer so I am not surprised by unexpected company and only some rice cakes to offer.....

I'm off to make the day happen......

Here is a little poem by David Rosenthal to remember the lost birch tree that brought me such pleasure when I would stop to drink in its beauty as I gardened, or snapped a picture of the blue sky against which its lovely branches were framed.

Trees need not walk the earth

for beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

Where they stand.

Here among the children of the sap

is no pride of ancestry:

A birch may wear no less the morning

than an oak.

Here are no heirlooms

Save those of loveliness,

in which each tree

is kingly in its heritage of grace.

Here is but beauty's wisdom

in which all trees are wise.

Trees need not walk the earth

For beauty or for bread;

Beauty will come to them

In the rainbow -

The sunlight -

And the lilac-haunted rain;

And bread will come to them

As beauty came:

In the rainbow

in the sunlight -

in the rain.

David Rosenthal