Tag: trees

Our beautiful tree

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Years ago I returned from a trip to the U.K. to find the tree outside was decimated. That’s maybe an exaggeration but I was shocked. As the taxi pulled up I could now see most of the front of the house.

A branch had broken and MAnjula had had the tree trimmed. Not quite pollarding but a shock nevertheless. It was like a no 1 haircut.

What had happened to our tree!?

It’s now recovered and dominates.

It’s a beautiful tree that we both loved. The Indian way is however to hack them back. Its a process that needs managing.

Today

A couple of branches had come loose in a recent storm and so it needed a trim—— carefully supervised to ensure they didn’t go too far.

I didn’t want the same hacking so both SB and I supervised and approved each branch to be cut.

Micro-management in action.

The security guy from the local school doubles as a tree chopper. He did the duty. Later we’ll have someone do a more precision job with a circular saw.

There was a keystone cops element to it.

Thankfully we didn’t pull down any of the wires

Manjula once declared her wish to be reincarnated as a tree as it supported, protected and sheltered people. That’s just like her

I think our strong beautiful tree was in her mind.

We now have symbolic trees in our life, in the house, the car and our real beauty outside.

Here’s another one … Just inside our main door.

Butchers 2

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Another tree bites the dust without any heavy rain or wind but it’s the one next to it they were proposing to cut down

Part one here.

Here’s evidence, if we needed it:

1 the current team failed to spot which tree would fall next, their approach is random

2 in any case, it’s difficult to predict which trees will fall but it’s impossible without some expertise

3 we need some expert knowledge, supervision and accountability to target which trees are fundamentally weak and stop the unnecessary felling of trees

I have no idea where the railing is there. It’s not managed.

Butchers

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Unnecessary butchering of trees

Three trees chopped down in little over a day.

One tree fell because of a rain storm so they’re concerned more will fall. it’s important to protect people but let’s get the balance right and check with those we can trust, who know what’s best.

Only cut when and where it’s necessary.

Staff shouldn’t be given tree rein.

I failed to save at least one tree that didn’t need to be cut.

I’ve been advised that there’s no need to chop down the trees. Just trim the branches and reduce the ‘crown.’ So it doesn’t get waterlogged and top heavy when it rains, then it’s less likely to break and fall over .

I’ve seen a small chain saw at the end of a stick that’s ideal for the job.

It needs someone with the relevant skills and authority to take charge.

Do we care? Who is accountable? How do we stop it happening again?

Trees

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Manjula wished to be reincarnated as a tree. She wanted to provide cover and and support to people. To me it reflected her strength and gentleness.

The Pongamia tree that Manjula wanted to be, as is the one outside our house.

I was reminded of this after reading a recent brain picking, with reference to a letter from D H Lawrence reflecting his love for trees.

“To walk among trees is to be reminded that although relationships weave the fabric of life, one can only be in relationship — in a forest or a family or a friendship — when firmly planted in the sovereignty of one’s own being, when resolutely reaching for one’s own light.”

That’s so my Manjula. It’s a lesson she leaves me with. As she now waits for me to lift myself from my bed of lethargy and act.

“A century ago, Hermann Hesse contemplated how trees model for us this foundation of integrity in his staggeringly beautiful love letter to trees — how they stand lonesome-looking even in a forest, yet “not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.” Celebrating them as “the most penetrating preachers,” he reverenced the silent fortitude with which “they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.”

again I’m so reminded of MAnjula, her own strength, independence and gentle kindness.

A Manjula plaque fixed to our tree on her birthday.

“A supreme challenge of human life is reconciling the longing to fulfill ourselves in union, in partnership, in love, with the urgency of fulfilling ourselves according to our own solitary and sovereign laws. Writing at the same time as Hesse, living in exile in the mountains, having barely survived an attack of the deadly Spanish Flu that claimed tens of millions of lives, the polymathic creative force D.H. Lawrence (September 11, 1885–March 2, 1930) took up the question of this divergent longing with great subtlety and splendor of insight in his autobiographically tinted novel Aaron’s Rod (free ebook | public library), rooting the plot’s climactic relationship resolution in a stunning passage about trees.”


The fact is I’m able to find references to Manjula anywhere and everywhere. “A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.”

– Amelia Earhart