Striking Sweetgum Leaf Amid The Detritus

American Sweetgum -Liquidambar styraciflua

The Sweetgum tree is native to the southeastern United States and a member of a genus made up of only six species. The others are found only in Asia. The first historical reference to the tree comes from the author and soldier, Don Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who accompanied Cortez in 1519 and was a witness to ceremonies between Cortez and Montezuma, who both partook of a liquid amber extracted from a sweetgum tree. The tree itself was first noticed and recorded by the historian Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542. Once commercially popular for soaps, adhesives and pharmaceuticals, today its wood is valuable for fine furniture and interior finishing.

but if you have them growing in your yard as I do, you will go crazy cleaning up the fruiting body that falls onto the ground at every time of year  

Tall Trees and Indian Summer Sun

Shadow Show

Another Day - from the side

The Solitary Goose

The Solitary Goose
Du Fu

孤雁

孤雁不饮啄
飞鸣声念群
谁联一片影
相失万重云
望尽似犹见
哀多如更闻
野鸭无意绪
鸣噪亦纷纷

gū yàn

gū yàn bù yǐn zhuó
fēi míng shēng niàn qún
shuí líng yī piàn yǐng
xiāng shī wàn chóng yún
wàng jìn sì yóu jiàn
āi duō rú gèng wén
yě yā wú yì xù
míng zào yì fēn fēn 

 

Solitary goose not drink peck
Fly call sound miss flock
Who remember one now shadow
Mutual lose myriad layer cloud
Look utmost seem as if look
Distressed much like become hear
Wild duck without state of mind
Call voices also numerous and confused

 

The solitary goose does not drink or eat,
It flies about and calls, missing the flock.
No-one now remembers this one shadow,
They've lost each other in the myriad layers of cloud.
It looks into the distance: seems to see,
It's so distressed, it thinks that it can hear.
Unconsciously, the wild ducks start to call,
Cries of birds are everywhere confused.

 

The poem appears both in characters, pinyin, gloss and English translation; 

 

 Du Fu (also known as Tu Fu) - [712- 770] 

 widely acknowledged as the finest of the classical Chinese poets,

 gave his poems a particularly sensitive feeling for humanity. 

Du Fu wrote in the High Tang period his work being very diverse, 

but his most characteristic poems are autobiographical and historical, 

recording the effects of war and vicissitudes on his own life.