The tree was beautiful and we loved it.
It was a maple that was young and growing when we moved here after the fires, and was part of many different trees on the property, all quite immature.
All of which have since grown into a veritable forest, which colour my autumn with shades of gold, scarlet, maroon and delicate cream.
Such a beautiful maple. Deepest sympathies to Fran and the Clelands.
Photo: Fran Cleland.
However, the maple had been planted in the house square, bordered on each side by the walls of the house and the barbeque area about a twenty-metre square.
Everything was fine for some time, but whether it was its felicitous surroundings, sheltered and with the lawn well-tended, it grew. Boy did it grow.
Far more than its fellows growing further down the garden, until ten years on, nothing grew under it, the nearby light-starved roses put up a petition demanding light and food and it shaded the solar panels.
Although in autumn its colour was breathtaking, the amount of leaves it dropped on the roof and around its feet was astounding. Its trunk was a good foot around and it was ten metres high.
We began to have quiet discussions about its future. We LOVE our trees. The forest here is a complete delight to us, but total reality stared us in the face.
It was a very big tree in exactly the wrong place.
We called in the expert arborist whose first question was “Why did you plant it there…” My defensive answer was, “I didn’t.”
General agreement was that yes, it had to go.
Talk about guilt… huge guilt, we felt like murderers, but we arranged for it to happen, and on the due date five efficient looking people arrived and set up.
In the meantime, up until now my husband had been stoic, but on the morning, he was having palpitations – it would fall on the house, were they insured, and, like Chicken Little in the cartoons, he was sure disaster would follow.
But no, after making me feel really bad by saying what a beautiful tree it was, the arborists sprang into action, and, like experts dissembling a jigsaw puzzle neatly, in three hours and to my husband’s total relief, all that was left was the bluestone square it previously stood in.
I am still sad its gone, but the roses are tapdancing, and I was surprised that it’s possible to work in the kitchen without turning the lights on.
There is debate between my son and me as to what will be planted in its place, but it will be something worthy of the one that is gone.
I will keep its photo to remind me of its beauty, but in my heart I know it had to go.
