To begin with, this is a story of a wife being right.
15 years ago, when we were planting the small seedlings of red mahogany (not a true mahagony, but a native gum tree known for it's red wood that's good for furniture) in a trio in the back paddock, my husband cynically said that we'll never see the trees grow that tall.
It's hard to capture the size of these trees on my phone
I was so annoyed. Why did he have to be negative and cynical? Of course they'd grow tall in our life time, and even if they didn't, wouldn't it be nice if the next person that lived here could enjoy the shade of these trees? Because I had wished that twenty years ago, someone had planted trees for our shade.
Now, when we walk past these trees, I like to say something like: 'isn't it funny that these trees grew so tall?', in the manner of a wife that is right. They must be at least thirty feet high now.
A slow growing blackwood, a kind of acacia valued for it's wood.
But this is also a story of environmental responsibility.
Because we aren't just planting trees for our own shade and to enjoy the beauty of an empty five acres made into a bush block of sorts, but for the insects, birds and other wildlife that are being pushed out by agriculture, development, climate change and degradations to landscapes here in Australia.
The casuarina or she oak - some native bird populations depend on it for survival, like the glossy black cockatoo in NSW that's now endangered.
I want to shout at people to do the same. Plant a tree or twenty this year, because you must. Because as the father of permaculture in Australia, Bill Mollison, said, if 'you don't plant a walnut tree, in twenty years you won't have walnuts'. Apply this to anything you plant, for any number of years, and it's the same thing. It sounds like a cliche, an advertisment: plant for the future, today.
The unusual but cool blossoms of a pincushion hakea
Any new development should be doing the same - filling empty spaces with trees, from open spaces to nature strips. It should be legislated. We know that planting trees helps cool places down, from small backyards to urban centres. We know they attract wildlife. If I ruled the world - thank goodness I don't - I'd make it a rule that you have to plant a bare minimum of trees every year, and large companies would be compelled to plant veritable forests.
The wattles grow the fastest - they also only last ten or so years, but their bright yellows are spectacular, and the birds love them too. The wood burns well, hot and bright like pine. We have lovely hakea, with their pinwheel flowers, gums that flower pale milky whites to bright yellows and reds where honeyeaters and parrots hang.
This huge gum on the fenceline dropped a limb that'd supply weeks worth of firewood.
The crows come and sit in the gum near the chook pen - clever avian thieves they are. One caws to let the others know what's going on, and then they descend to steal the eggs, leaving the shells wherever they fall.
There are trees I remember planting on sad mental health days, absent from the cortisol inducing classroom, and trees I remember planting on days in love with Jamie - not that I'm not now, it's just some days are brighter than others. There's trees that home bees, trees that drop limbs in the August winds that we use for firewood.
This plantation is just over our fence
Some tall trees catch best the morning sun, alit with an orange glow.
There's ones that have taken years to do much at all - perhaps it's the soil biome, reluctant to allow them to take hold. There's wide spreading trees with shaggy bark and tall elegant giraffes whose green stripes turn from pale lime in the rain to deep greys in the dry.
We no longer mow the middle half the of the acreages, as the gums suck the water that once was messy with grass and weeds. It's a small forest, there. There's also a small grove of she-oaks, that the cockatoos like.
None of these trees were here when we moved in
And to the west, a forest too, planted to absorb excess waste water from the water facility. In there hides foxes and wallabies, rabbits and possums. We aren't allowed in there, though sometimes I sneak in to look for mushrooms.
It's been so dry lately that some trees will die, particularly if their roots havent' found their way to the wet clay and the water table deep below us. We can do our best to keep them alive, of course. There's no point in writing poetry about how much we need trees unless we're doing practical things to save them.
Because it matters - for now, and the future.
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