Detail Diary, Vol #10

Floral emergence, dancing trees, moon phases

Feb 25, 2024

February 12 - 24, 2024

Dear friend,

The last two weeks have been especially rich with details as Spring continues to venture out. I’ve found that just stepping outside for a few minutes presents me with something startling or delightful, whether blossom or bird or the creatures living under my feet. Primroses buttering the toes of trees. High-sailing rooks. A moon just out of newness, a moon just past full ripeness. The delicate sounds that come to me when I pause long enough under a tree, like a language thought to be lost suddenly finding my ears.

I highly recommend it.

Thanks to last week’s post about the trees of French bande dessinée artists, I’ve also been meditating on the miracle of urban trees.1 What fantastical souls to have among us, and how grateful I am to previous city dwellers and planners who made place for them even in the most building-bound squares and courtyards. Look, for example, at entry #130, those balletic figures who drew me from the street into a dimension all their own.2 What a gift, this vitality, this organic counterpoint to our careful angles, these ambassadors between us and our ecology.

I’ve decided I must always live and/or work somewhere within sightline of trees and their denizens.3

Here is your usual reminder that this post is best viewed on the web or in the Substack app! Clicking on a Note will also take you to the browser to see its full text and sometimes additional photos. For an introduction to my Detail Diary, see here.

The dancing trees led me around a corner where my eye was caught by a trompe-l'œil window into an enchanting little courtyard visited by goldfinches and blue tits. A few steps farther and I found myeslf looking into the real thing—just without the birds.

Important Note #1: The French name for snowdrop is perce-neige.

Important Note #2: The moon may be hiding high above the cropped frame in the third photo of entry #132 below…if so, click to reveal!

#134: Listening under the blooming dogwood, I hear honeybees filling the blossoms with buzz, great tit chattering, and something else—the tiniest ticking against the dry leaves underneath the tree, and the tiniest streaks dropping before my eyes. They’re petals, little chits of yellow sprinkling the undergrowth like lemon zest.
Another minute of stillness, and a vole ventures quick and brown out of its hole, first for snatches of sweet grass blades, then a whole feast of forb leaves, undeterred by my hulking.
I realize I’m standing on a whole village of golf-ball-sized holes.
What a vocabulary of vibrations these creatures must cultivate. Perhaps they even have a word for the ticking down of dogwood petals.

Important Note #3: The French name for vole is campagnol.

Maybe I’ll do a series of entries or post featuring the urban trees of Grenoble…

And remember the tree with fairy lights that had a similar effect in Vol #9, #117?

Of course, there are whole biomes that are treeless and entirely worthwhile, and if I lived in one of them I’m sure I would find other ambassadors to commune with. (Although it’s just as likely, if I lived in a town in one of these biomes, that humans would be coaxing along their trees there anyway.)