If you know me you’ll know of my fondness for trees, and even knowing they have turned on me from time to time, I’m unlikely to have anything negative to say about them. This week being National Tree Week then, is a time for me to reflect on the wonder of trees, to celebrate and be thankful for them, and if conditions permit: a time to plant one too. It would be remiss of me therefore not to put pen to paper and fingers to keys in order to show my respect for our woody friends. If you’re here though for the usual ‘love and plant trees’ kind of message, you might just be barking up the wrong tree.
Today I’m not so much going to write about trees, but write as one, and yes you did read that correctly: I’ll be morphing into an actual tree, to present an alternative tree’s-eye view. Should you choose to read on therefore, you’ll find it’s not so much me talking about trees, but talking as one, for a change. Go with it for a while, I dare you!
Now, to a point, I’d consider myself tree-like anyway, my robust trunk having grown incrementally over the years. When puzzled, my furrowed forehead isn’t too far removed from a tree’s fissured bark, and at times I can get a little creaky. Thankfully,
nothing has yet split, fallen off or chosen to nest in my hair for that matter, but I might have toppled over a few times! To become an actual tree though I do need to put down roots, which is a challenge indeed for this wandering heart.
Maybe unsurprisingly, I’ve chosen to settle in the middle of a smoothly shaven lawn beside a huge sprawling historic house: a pleasant and nourishing place to spend my days. The nearest building, a classically styled mansion holds a fine position, enjoying magnificent and very carefully designed landscape views, with acres of farmed land snaking away between the hills. I guess it’s the kind of dreamy place that rises romantically above cold low-slung morning mists and shimmers like an illusion during summertime sunsets.
In my tree form, mature is how they describe me, as I’ve been growing here slowly now for quite some time. In the early years when I was but a teenager myself, the children of the house would scramble up and play between my branches, and grand parties would be hosted around and about. On some nights music would play, and fireworks would fizzle and bang, their colourful sparks mirrored in the lake, although things are a little different now.
These days as the estate opens daily to visitors, people come to embrace nature and culture, but often seem just as interested in the café’s coffee as they are in my colourful and exquisitely grown cones. Family parties have given way to big events and swarms of people regularly and eagerly arrive for a day out, to find some space and gawp in awe at the grand landscape vision that has endured. Having seen good times come and go I tend to take it all in my stride, and in any case, I’m forced by nature to rise above it all.
On a more intimate level, in recent years someone has been visiting annually who I’m not so sure about, a person who whacks my sides with a rubber mallet, wiggles my tree-top braces and studies closely my out-stretched form. Their badge mentions ‘Arboricultural Consultant’, and whilst I like to think of them as a friend or private physician of sorts, their visits can be a mixed blessing. Following their visit you see, someone else usually arrives soon after who at best spreads a little more mulch to comfort my roots, but at worst, saws and takes my limbs away. They mean well, but it does leave me cut and sore for a while.
I’m a Cedar tree, with family origins in Lebanon where my form is proudly exhibited on the national flag, as the tree person once said. Visitors passing by pause to read the little information board beside the path, filling their heads with facts and gawping at my grandeur. Apparently, I was an ‘exotic’ choice of tree when selected around two hundred and fifty years ago, back then a rare choice in these parts, except for the most select of neighbouring estates in all four directions, that is.
Whatever they chose to call me and from wherever I hail, I’m a mighty fine specimen if I do say so myself, having fed well from these clay grounds and grown to become a giant amongst trees. In fact, I’d be the tallest tree in view were it not for those infuriating Sequoias just across the way. Planted a hundred years after my good self, those pointed evergreens have shown no respect, simply shooting up to overtake me like speed focussed racers. I take some consolation from knowing that my heart and body are slow-grown, solid and pure, and my virtuous wood has been long respected for being so.
Evergreen is my canopy though I have to say, albeit a refined version. In the springtime, my brand-new leafy rosettes come through in their thousands, looking sharp but feeling soft and rubbery to the touch. Almost daily, my greenery is caressed and sniffed by one individual or another, someone seeking to bond in some way with nature. They all come expecting something different I’m sure, and I love to see the surprise on their faces.
My smoother side doesn’t last long though, oh no, as following those lime green fresh youthful days my colours deepen, and my whorls of clustered needles turn prickly and pointed. In numbers too high to count, leaves that grow across a flattened, horizontal network of branches eventually do turn brown and fall. Like all other leaves, they just can’t remain evergreen forever.
I love the freshness of my leaves, my luxuriant naturally textured robe that stands me out so uniquely from the crowd. This magnificent foliage, nevertheless, with its bluey green ghostly sheen must sometimes surrender and consign itself to nature. Especially when the snow falls, and sometimes when the rain falls too, the weight on my extended, flattened arm-like branches is sometimes too heavy to bear, and I have the scars to show it. The weather, having given its best to build me up from sapling to statuesque adult, now does its utmost to bring me down again, bending my branches until sometimes they fall.
Somehow though through rain and storm, I survive, and whilst summer’s heat may wither my roots, I am strong and live to continue my travels through time, alongside those who admire me so. Imagine the brightest and hottest of days, and the darkest windiest of nights, I have been here weathering them all; and there have been some mighty moments I can tell you.
I’m talking a good deal about myself, I know, but then I am a wise old specimen, allegedly. Whilst much of my knowledge and secrets are locked deep inside my core, nonetheless, my bark and limbs do speak of a life well lived, some parts wounded and broken, others flourishing with a new season’s growth. But what if the table was to turn and I were blessed with the gift of speech, what would I say or ask of those who stop and cast their eyes upon my fine form?
My questions would be many I’m sure, as from where they might have travelled that day? I might ask them what they see in me, and is there another so fine? But if one reply alone could be sought, knowing that I would forever be lodged in that place, it would be to my homeland.
What do they know of where I came from, of the place that for my kind, is home? The answer to that might just quench my curiosity, for I know not if that place, is the one true place I could call home; a place where in another life I could be admired alongside my kin, or whether I would simply become lost amongst a crowd.
Maybe I should leave the table-turning be, put my inquiries to rest and accept this fine place as my forever home: a place where visitors hug my trunk, breathe my perfume and sigh, where good care comes my way, where the cheery gardener mows and the grass grows green.
End Note: That’s it, I’ve stopped creating, and I hope it’s struck a tree-like positive chord. I’d be really happy if you’d take a few seconds more to like and share it, or to check out the core info about National Tree Week, via the link below. Regards, Gary, Gardening Ways.
Gardening Ways 