Issue #71: Tapping Trees & Hobbit Quotes
…plus some new street art
Celebrations/decorating: personalized Easter baskets (see it here)
I always love the weeks leading up to Easter. After a long winter and holidays that are based more on the deeper, more saturated colours (like the reds of Christmas and Valentine’s Day) I love seeing all the Easter décor and inspiration photos. Almost overnight the stores, my inbox, and almost everything else online changes and the world is filled with happy, lighter colours and there’s a new energy to the air.
I got a promotional email from Etsy this week that had the cutest personalized Easter baskets! I’ve linked to the exact ones above, but there were plenty of similar options. I love how customizable they are! The description says they’re for kids, but I’m sure with the right customization and colour scheme it could work for all ages. To the surprise of no one, I would either get blue with white writing or white with blue writing (and no carrot). I also like that they don’t necessarily have to be for Easter since I think they would work just as well as a general spring item.
Activity/seasons: Tapping some of our maple trees
It’s March in Ontario, which can only mean one thing: maple syrup season! We’ve had so many property maintenance and indoor/house projects to deal with that many of the fun farm projects have been either delayed until next year or started late. We’ve missed most of the maple syrup season, but we’ve had such perfect weather lately that we had to do something. The cold nights and above zero temperatures during the day are exactly what you want. Cataloguing the trees on our property is a project I’d like to tackle later this year, so I’m hoping for next year’s season we’ll have a list of all the viable maple trees and be able to have a plan in place. This year we just tapped two trees close to the house, a red maple and a silver maple. According to an arborist friend, the silver maple is approximately 300 years old!! It was one of the first things I noticed the first time we toured the property. I’d never tapped my own tree before so it was exciting! I like projects like this because not only are they fun in their own right but because they remind me that there are exciting projects ahead once we deal with some more pressing house updates. You gotta find your motivation wherever you can!
Our set up:
The chickens love to help:
Some sap in one of the lines (if it’s hard to see, the sap is in the right side of the tube):
Boiling the sap:
Quotes: Samwise Gamgee’s “good in the world” monologue (read it here)
I’ve been tackling a lot of organizing projects lately, which isn’t unusual for me, but I’ve been trying to move some focus away from organizing physical objects and also working on my electronic files. They’ve gotten somewhat neglected in the process of setting up spaces in the new house but it’s time to start getting them better organized before they spiral (even more) out of control. While sorting through some files of random things I’ve saved over the past few years I found a quote from the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, that I had saved (you can read it in the links above). It’s a monologue delivered by Samwise Gamgee and was adapted for the movie from the second book in the series by Tolkien (also called The Two Towers). I had forgotten about it but feel like I stumbled across it again at the perfect time. The book was written over seventy years ago and the movie about twenty yet the passage could have been written today and it would still be relevant. It hit me in the feels a few years ago, which is why I saved it, and it still hits deeply today, possibly even more so. I’ve printed and pinned up a simple version of it and I’d like to find the time soon to design a more decorative version.
Apart from the message, what I love most about this passage is who says it. Typically Frodo and Bilbo Baggins get all the Hobbit glory, but this was said by Sam, a humble and loyal character, who delivers one of the most impactful speeches of the series, and does it when it truly matters.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
― Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers
Quotes/books: Other Lord of the Rings quotes (read some here, here, and here)
Finding the above passage sent me down a Tolkien rabbit hole this week. There are so many beautiful quotes from Lord of the Rings, both the books and the movies. Sometimes the movies quoted the books word for word and other times they adapted and combined passages from the books. I’ve already written a few more down in my quotes journal. I hope you find one (or more!) that you enjoy too!
“I wish it need not have happened in my time”, said Frodo. “So do I”, said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”.
— J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
Art/creativity: Street artist David Zinn (see some photos here and visit David’s website here)
Ok, we just talked above about some darkness so let’s end on a lighter note! I could not have been more happy this week to have discovered the work of street artist David Zinn. He uses chalk to create art on things like sidewalks and building walls. They are whimsical and humourous, and meant to bring a new dimension and joy to everyday spaces. One article that I read referred to him as a “happiness maker”, and I feel like out of all the things you could be known for in life, that’s a pretty good one.
The second link above is for David’s website. It shows more examples of his work and has a three minute video where he talks about his artistic process and how he comes up with his ideas. I thought it was interesting how he contrasts making art on a blank sheet of paper versus concrete or the sidewalk. I’ve also bookmarked his TedX Talk because I have a feeling it could also be very interesting.
Wishing you a wonderful week and I’ll be back in your inbox next Sunday!
Lauren