Moss, Hemlock, and Magnolia

We continue to experience soggier than usual weather here.  It's probably not a great summer for those who like to spend their time at the pool, but there is an up side to all this extra moisture- the plants of Shabo Mekaw are lovin' it.  For those who aren't familiar, Shabo Mekaw is our beautiful 60 acre paradise out in Lewis County, at the edge of the Appalachian plateau of Kentucky.  It is normally a more humid place than here, but I could tell that the droughts and hotter temperatures of the last few summers were taking their toll on the sensitive inhabitants of that delicate ecosystem.  Frankly, I was particularly worried about the health of the hemlocks, the big leaf magnolias, and the mosses, which seemed to be struggling.  But this year, they're beginning to come back.

 

I don't know the names of all the mosses that grow here,

 but I think this kind is called shining club moss.

 

The plant with tiny white branches is a mystery- strange, but beautiful...

I call this pillow moss, for obvious reasons. 

 

Close up, it looks like feathers, and does feel soft enough to lay your head on...

To walk through a hemlock glade is to feel peace...

...to see the world through a curtain of green lace,

...to be sheltered by an umbrella of giant magnolia leaves
(often longer than my forearm),

this is peace...

                     The Presence of Trees

                     by Michael S. Glaser

I have always felt the living presence
of trees
the forest that calls to me as deeply
as I breathe,
as though the woods were marrow of my bone
as though
I myself were tree, a breathing, reaching
arc of the larger canopy
beside a brook bubbling to foam
like the one
deep in these woods,
that calls
that whispers home