Tree, No Tree | Perfume Posse

So, Sunday the weather sort of calmed down, meaning sunshine, with a sharp shower every once in a while. This was after Friday and Saturday madness (storms Austen and Boelo – yup, two named storms in two days). Just gales and pouring rain. Surprisingly, we didn’t flood. But, I think that’s because it was so monumentally dry over the summer and the fields, etc, are still absorbing anything they can. As of last week (before the storms), the reservoirs down here were at 30% of normal. So, yeah, it can rain.

Last Monday was covid booster verrrry early. Things didn’t really hit till Tuesday. By Wednesday I felt reasonable. Thursday was reflexology which shook things up mightily. So, a week of feeling unsettled. Sunday the time changed (‘fall back’) and a local food festival.

The large, very beautiful eucalyptus tree is now gone.

Monday evening and Tuesday morning I made sure to say thank you and good bye to the tree … because I just do stuff like that.

I felt privileged to partake of that tree for around 15 years even though in the past, say, five I had started to get uneasy about how much it moved when we had storms.

The irony of this is when I visited the woman who owns that garden a couple of months ago to chat about it, she said by law I could cut back whatever impinged on my garden. Which I thought about doing. But then I thought it would be better that her tree guys did it when they did whatever for the autumn into winter cleanup.

When I went back a couple of weeks ago to check on this, she said ‘well, it looks like the whole tree needs to come down – I am aware that if it fell in the wind, it would probably hit your house…’ So, thanks, yeah, and there you go.

Eucalyptus are not native to the UK. There are/were a number in the village for whatever reason and over time most people have to take them out. They are invasive, grow massively large, suck up water, their roots are problematic, they cause boundary issues. I have had discussions with a number of neighbours where their neighbours have ended up having to take the trees out no matter how nice they look.

So, on Monday evening she came over and said the tree was coming out Tuesday. And, it did.

Took around eight hours total. The tree guy who did the body of the in-tree work was so impressive. I’m only going to bore with around five pics – from tree to no tree – but it was fascinating to watch.

As noted, I was still feeling a bit crap from the covid booster on Tuesday so I spent a lot of time inside just resting – and watching how he did things.

By the timing we were heading into the gloaming (which happens early now) the tree was gone and we had a beautiful Magritte sky with very white clouds against deep blue.

I now have loads more light. Very pleased the shades for the glass roof, French doors and small kitchen window will be installed before we move back into spring/summer.

(the tree you now see is the
cypress on the other side of their garden)

And I wonder how my garden is going to react to more light in places that used to be very shaded. Had a manic half day of buying a new small tree, some alliums (allium ‘hair’ – very cool looking), and a load of violets and violas.

Actually, the change in the amount of light is pretty stunning. I have a lot of respect for trees and what they do for us but I don’t think this change will be a bad one (hoping I’m right).

Pics: mine, wiki

Related