I fell in love with palm trees at an early age, but it wasn’t until I went to Key West that I understood the magnitude of their size and their power to heal. That’s when I decided to bring home a fallen palm frond.


Found one night on the sidewalk in Old Town, this lone frond had fallen from its tree and barricaded the sidewalk and part of the street. Deeming it essential to my spiritual well being, I decided it was coming home with me come hell or high water.

   A newly fallen palm frond. Notice the shoes. 

My traveling partner doubted my ability to fold into thirds the still green frond and shove it into my suitcase. But fold I did, and I can only imagine what the baggage handlers thought when they unzipped my bag, or my family’s thoughts when I unpacked my bag once at home.

That frond became the namesake for a room in my house called “The Palm Room.” Living in New Hampshire at the time, winter’s cold and dreary hold kept me diligent in the search for something, anything that provided the hope of warm, sunny days. It was vicarious living at its best – or worst depending on how you look at it.



Sitting in The Palm Room, writing on my laptop, I could hear the rustling of that frond as I imagined it in its former life swaying gently with its treemates to the dance of a gentle breeze. Closing my eyes, I heard the rhythmic surf and felt the soft white sand around bare feet. “One of these days…” became my mantra.

Palm fronds are no longer an icon for dreams come true. They are embedded deeply in the fiber of my daily life and they continue to serve me well albeit for different reasons now.

It brings me great joy when I need to draw a palm tree for a Pug At The Beach illustration, and I can simply step outside and look around. Before I had to Google Image them. My friend Joey has been educating me on the variety of palms. In our travels he points them out giving me the details of each: whether they are self cleaning, or native, and which have shallow root systems.


When the fronds in my yard rustle, they indicate ocean wave activity and the treasures that will be brought to shore by wind and water. The sound intensity is representative of how strong the wind, how big the waves and how rich the bounty discarded by the ocean. It has become my ritual to walk the beach on breezy days during low tide. This and welcoming each day.

In the pre-dawn light of every morning I step outdoors to greet the day. Most mornings the air temperature is in the lower 60’s. The air is dry. The cardinals sing. And the sun rises over the palm trees in my yard as the sky changes from black to silver to blue. And, all is good.

My wish for you today is that you find an icon which is representative of your dreams. Take it and keep it close. Spend some time everyday to worship it, and yourself, and then do the necessary work to make those dreams into reality. You can do it. I did. You can, too.

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Copyright 2009 Diana Taylor, Pug At The Beach
Photo credit: Diana Taylor, palm trees