Healing with Trees from Windows
A guest blog from Rob McBride aka the Tree Hunter & #TreesFromWindows
One bright Saturday morning back in late March, I was staring out of the kitchen window while dutifully washing the dishes in a trance state of mind. In that moment I thought about doing something #TREEmendously special for the folks of my hometown of Ellesmere in Shropshire. Everyone around me was going through this difficult time that Covid-19 and the lockdown had brought upon us. As I suddenly jabbed my hand onto the spike of a BBQ skewer in the bowl, I glanced across the cul-de-sac, through which I saw the majesty of the 250-year-old veteran tree in the hedgerow of my neighbour. ‘That’s a lovely tree outside my window’, I thought to myself.
Trees From Windows! Yes! That’s what I will do for my folks to distract them from the awful reality we are living through at the moment! And that is how #treesfromwindows was born.
And, so it was in a whirl of action that Saturday morning. We made a Facebook group, as well as Twitter and Instagram accounts. Long story short, BBC Hereford & Worcester and BBC Radio Shropshire both picked up the story and ran with it. In Belgium, national radio station RTBF has also joined in and aired a short piece on us. You can listen to the great fun I had with both stations here.
Members were soon joining the Facebook group. Now, we have around 1,500 members with #treesfromwindows posts coming in from all over the world. Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, Australia, Wales, USA & Hawaii, Seychelles, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, France, Belgium and many more countries united through #treesfromwindows. To see posts from their individual country visit thetreehunter on Flickr.
Not just photographs….
In early April, I messaged my good friend Dan Llywelyn Hall - the world renown artist, who was the youngest artist to ever paint Her Majesty the Queen. He loved the idea and soon painted a couple of stunning #treesfromwindows art pieces. He then went on to take his small easel out in his Mini and painted another one from the window of his car. Local artist to me, Holly Hayward also created a beautiful TFW art work.
Bringing comfort…
I have also gotten some poignant posts. One lady from a small village sent me her #treesfromwindows oak tree, which she likes to stand under and hug in times of her depression descending upon her. ‘It is a real comfort’, she told fellow members in her lovely post.
Robin from Spain had sent me a distant view of his #treesfromwindows from his apartment window, where he had been locked down for 48 days! For the lucky ones, there are many #treesfromwindows of gardens across the world coming in too. People are rightly proud to show off their personal trees.
Don’t ask me why, but we have had many cats wanting to get in on the act too! #TreesAndCatsFromWindows might be a tag too long though.
And from Amsterdam…
Perhaps, the most famous of all #treesfromwindows was the Anne Frank Chestnut tree in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In her diary, Anne wrote about that tree. Sadly, it is now gone, but its legacy continues to live on with many Anne Frank trees around the globe. I actually ‘met’ one of them when tree hunting in the high mountains of Corsica in 2015. Anne Frank wrote in her diary on February 23rd 1944:
“From my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind,"
As way of tribute for the NHS, I have also recently painted a rainbow across a small window frame I had kept to repair and never did. It is now proudly displayed outside my home and has been on several ‘daily exercise’ trips to frame some of my more remote trees!
So, please do come along and join us at #treesfromwindows, ciao Rob McBride, the Tree Hunter.
HOW TO JOIN IN THE #treesfromwindows fun:
Follow the Twitter stream or on Instagram