Day 38: "When in Rome ..."

Today I spent time in a local park and was granted permission to pick a sprig of berries; in return I left a piece of my hair. Up until this year, it was always the red berries from the holly bushes outside my door and in the parking lot at a previous job that provided them for Yule decorations. Here in South Carolina, the only holly I saw was in a mall parking lot and its berries were yellow. These are the berries of the domestica nandina plant – a broadleaf evergreen shrub commonly known as heavenly bamboo – growing here that will decorate my skoolie this Yule. If I find a cotton field that has already been picked, I will try for a few left-behind bolls that can stand in for snowballs. And perhaps I’ll be gifted a pine cone or two.
I had never seen cypress trees in the wild, and was captivated by the conical structures called cypress knees that arise from the roots, helping to anchor the tree and provide gas exchange in the wet soil. They looked like a tribe of wood spirits. There were goddesses and children and elders and gods and a few other creatures I could not identify. I could almost feel them looking back at me. I thought if I pretended to look away and then turned back quickly, I could catch them moving as they went about their day, freezing in place only when humans walked by. I couldn’t turn my head around fast enough, though. (For more pictures, check out my Facebook page.)