A group of swamp white oaks Healthy soil is important, but for whom? In the Garden The young bur oak would not be kept down. Yet again it revealed itself among the standing dead stalks of a large patch of purple bee balm, a good three feet tall and leafing out. In spring, a bur oak’s leaves look like sharp-edged, glossy cutouts. They are not green, but shade delicately among soft corals, tans and pinks. The green comes a bit later, like a slow-motion wave gently pervading each leathery leaf. The question, as it had been for several years, was what to do with this young newcomer to the garden. About ten feet away and across the walk from house to garage stands a second bur oak that I’d started from an acorn some twelve years ago. I’ve enjoyed watching it grow its first sets of true leaves, become large enough to attract birds and then mature enough to bear acorns. This winter I limbed it up three feet from the ground, mainly to give the sedges and wild geraniums growing underneath a
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I have my comp students read a poem by Pablo Neruda (Ode to the Apple; my own translation). Another poem I use in class is one by Mary Oliver about the wanton destruction (for a shopping mall) of a pond she used to play around as a child.
Regarding accents and other diacritics in Spanish, a Spanish keyboard is the best solution, but I don't recommend it (letters will not be where you are used to finding them). Aside from that, if you use Microsoft Word, you can access them through the Insert: Symbol features. It's kind of tedious, but it does the job. Another option (again, in Microsoft Word) is to use the Set Language command to set your spell checker to Spanish. When you run spell check, the spell checker will often flag words without accents and other diacritics as misspelled; correcting them will add in the diacritics.
I know the Neruda poem--it's nice you can do your own translations. Don't know that Mary Oliver poem. I saw her read a few years ago.
Thanks for your help with the Spanish. The Word Set Language and Spell Check worked well. I was then able to paste it into blogger with no problem.
Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been
a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon
Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.
Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?
Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world wants to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.
Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass,
No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.
And I suppose sometime I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.
From Why I Wake Early, 2004