does anyone else miss looking up into trees? i didn't, until this afternoon, when i was out playing amateur photographer.

this tree is in beautiful, full bloom in the backyard right now. it reminds me very much of the white tree of gondor (see, "angela is a huge nerd"; also, "loves the lord of the rings"). we had a full day of rain on tuesday, and the yard is just pulsing with color. much to my dad's chagrin, the grass is growing at an exponential rate, and the dandelions are multiplying like bacteria. hence my taking pictures today of the tree (which, a household survey revealed, is a "crab apple tree") and the dandelions.
i once said (many times) that my worst nightmare was to be taught, long after my death, as a "nature poet". i'm not going to give you my updated treatise on my worst nightmare in that arena of my life, but i will say that i am old enough to gaze with wonder at nature. i am deliberately using the cheesiest language i can come up with, because i feel like a cliche among cliches by acknowledging it; even the photos are cliche. oh well.
if i were a "real" (read: serious, studious, skilled) photographer, i'd do a series of different trees and bill them as portraits of daphne. but then again, i'm quite taken with the daphne myth lately, and persephone as well.

here's a thought to leave you on, until tomorrow: last night evie brought me a book i had checked out from my catechism teacher in the fifth grade. i still haven't returned it, as it's on the shelf here. (i am a real slacker.) (by the by, i love the idea of going to school on a sunday just to learn the rules and dogma of your religion--it's like seminary for toddlers; very romantic, with a capital r.) on the cover, there's an illustration of jesus, flanked by a few apostles, his mother, and another woman. the divine miss m, i suppose. la luz pointed to the Man in White and said, "daddy?" (!) i would have fallen out of my chair had i not been sitting on the floor already.

in the movie magnolia, william h. macy's character says "our fathers are our models for god", or something to that effect. is it better or worse, then, for evie to make jesus (god) the model for her father? isn't she awfully young to be developing this sort of freudian/christ/oedipal complex?