Oak

With a little help from a lovely hairy highland cow, here's the seventh letter of the tree alphabet.

Hawthorn

It was autumn, so this picture of hawthorn (6th letter of the Gaelic Tree Alphabet) has lots of haws in it, as well as some leaves and thorns, and it takes the shape of the ogham character - the first of the group of letters that involve sloping 'twigs' off to the left of the vertical 'branch'.

Ash

The fifth letter of the tree alphabet. I made this when I was on writing retreat at Cove Park, on the path between the pods and cubes where the residents hide out and the main building. It was interesting to see how many people spotted it, and who just walked over it, even while it was quite legible. Note the ogham character on the bottom curve of the S.

Here's hoping the ash dieback disease does not spread too widely. They are such lovely trees, and the loss of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, would not be a good omen.

Willow

The fourth letter of the tree alphabet...

Alder

Here's the third letter of the tree alphabet. Alder is the tree of time - some of its branches carry the past, the present and the future - last year's cones (the letter L), this year's cones (the letter D) and next year's catkins (the letter E). The Ogham character is above it. 

Rowan

Here's the second alphabet photopoem, the letters arranged symbolically into the form of the second letter of the Ogham alphabet - a vertical line with two horizontal 'twigs'.

Birch

Happy New Year! I have resolved this year to get more of my poetry and related stuff up online. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been obsessing over the tree alphabet for the past few years. One of the things I did in celebration/exploration of it was a series of things like this. I'm pretty sure it's not a poem, but I think it might just about get away with being described as writing...