Trees

Writen by Helen Brown

Everyone has at least one tree in their life. There's the one your mother sheltered your pram under on summer days. Its leafy branches danced above your head forming the first patterns of childhood memories.

Or the tree you later climbed to rescue a baby thrush from. Except the bird didn't want rescuing, and died of fright instead.

The branches of that tree became as familiar to you as the limbs of your own body. It was your pirate ship, your sky chariot, your escape from the world - and ultimately an earthly reminder that life as an ordinary kid wasn't so bad because it was getting dark and cold, and time to go inside for Mum's corn on the cob.

Some people have deep connection to the tree they fell in love under, or one they planted in memory of the person they loved most. Trees don't seem to mind being the focus of so much human emotion. Their time frame's too long, their energy too ancient, to register our nostalgia.

My life's currently ruled by two trees – a large hibiscus near the front gate, and an enormous gum out the back. They tower over me both physically and in my thoughts. I love and hate them both.

We bought the house for the two trees. While the house itself was an ordinary looking cottage, the trees were something else.

The land agent's advertisement showed the hibiscus in full bloom – a mass of pale pink flowers, each with a crimson tongue.

"What a beautiful tree!" I said as we strolled beneath it on Open Home day.

The previous owner possessed an artistic soul. She'd plucked a single hibiscus flower and placed it in a bowl of water by the front door. I made a mental note that if we bought the house I'd do the same.

She must have also been a maniac with a broom. I don't recall seeing a single flower lying on the ground that day. It didn't occur to me that a tree sporting a thousand blooms or more must eventually shed every one of them – and there's only one direction they'd be heading.

As autumn approaches and the hibiscus reaches full glory I gaze up at its canopy of pink and shudder. There must be enough flowers up there for me to rake and sweep into at least six wheelie bins.

They won't come down in one hit. Oh no, they're too crafty for that. It'll take about eight weeks for the whole lot to fall - in showers of several hundred a day.

I've thought about not raking them and leaving them to rot on the paving stones. But with rain the petals become skiddy and lethal as a banana skins. Someone has to sweep and rake them up. That someone is me.

When I'm tired of raking I go out the back and worry about the four storey tall gum tree. Although it has a lot of soul, it brings sleepless nights with every storm.

We thought about having it chopped down before a man from the council said we couldn't because it's a "notable tree". More noticeable than notable, I reckoned, but was in no position to argue.

The grumpy old man over the back fence complains about it dumping leaves in his garden. Better a few thousand leaves than the whole thing.

A young sapling of an arborist gave a quote for pruning the gum this morning. Even though heaps of Eucalyptus tress just like it - though not quite as tall - toppled over in the last storm, he assured me he'd had personal experience of only three deaths from trees falling on people. He looked about 25. Three deaths seemed rather a lot for such a short span of experience.

More people die crossing the roads than from trees falling on them, he said. When I reminded him most people don't have giant gums in their back yard so his statistics might need altering, he was unimpressed.

We'd need council permission to prune the gum, he said, and that generally takes a month to come through.

I saw him out through the front door where I never leave a bowl of water with a hibiscus in it. He said the hibiscus tree must be 70 or 80 years old and that I should get an outdoor vacuum cleaner instead of raking the flowers.

"What a beautiful tree!" he said.

For a nanosecond I had to agree. Helen's email:notnuts@bigpond.com