A piece of writing has been rattling about in my head for a few days now. It's May, the heating is on, it cold, windy & raining outside & hot custard featured as part of the evening meal. And yet, at the forefront of my mind are eucalyptus trees & parrots!
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My mind insists on creating parallels between Australia & Herefordshire. It may be because recently I have noticed a small number of magnificent gum trees growing in my area - tall, slender trees with pale trunks & delicate leaves making a distinctive open, grey-green canopy. There are several species of eucalptys sufficiently hardy to thrive in the UK - the only one I recall seeing for sale in garden centres is the Cider Gum (Eucalyptus gunnii). I am not sure what variety the elegant ones are that I see as we drive about our business. I have been trying to decide whether one would grow well at our church site, whether it would look right & whether it was really appropriate - perhaps a good companion to a unidentified redwood- that creaks & groans in the wind and looks unbalanced missing it's partner, long since dead.
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As is often the way when themes occur, I opened at random the book I am currently reading (Wildwood) to a chapter entitled "Cockatoos". In it the author describes being awaken by screeching cockatoos "as they barrelled through the gum trees" and later he describes the ghost gum as having the "fluidity of a dancer" - all very exotic. Then quite surprisingly he says "it reminded me of the ash tree at home in Suffolk: smooth and pale skinned, with the graceful sinews of a dancer in the wind". So I am not alone in travelling so far, to a place with an alien flora & fauna, and yet finding an unexpected link with a familiar friend - an ash. At the entrance to our ruined church stands a magnificent ash & within the church yard itself we have preserved a 30 foot ash; through some expert crown reduction. Although we don't have cockatoos & galahs calling us to wakefulness, there are flashy raucous jays, yammering woodpeckers &, quarrelsome jackdaws nesting in the ruined church tower. Just once I have been to Australia & I find it odd that like the author of the book - the magnificent Roger Deakin (Wildwood A journey Through Trees) - I seem to have formed an emotional link between the two countries. To me the call of the jay always makes the word "parrot" appear before the word "jay" & similarly with a yammering woodpecker, the word "kookaburra" forms first.
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As is often the way when themes occur, I opened at random the book I am currently reading (Wildwood) to a chapter entitled "Cockatoos". In it the author describes being awaken by screeching cockatoos "as they barrelled through the gum trees" and later he describes the ghost gum as having the "fluidity of a dancer" - all very exotic. Then quite surprisingly he says "it reminded me of the ash tree at home in Suffolk: smooth and pale skinned, with the graceful sinews of a dancer in the wind". So I am not alone in travelling so far, to a place with an alien flora & fauna, and yet finding an unexpected link with a familiar friend - an ash. At the entrance to our ruined church stands a magnificent ash & within the church yard itself we have preserved a 30 foot ash; through some expert crown reduction. Although we don't have cockatoos & galahs calling us to wakefulness, there are flashy raucous jays, yammering woodpeckers &, quarrelsome jackdaws nesting in the ruined church tower. Just once I have been to Australia & I find it odd that like the author of the book - the magnificent Roger Deakin (Wildwood A journey Through Trees) - I seem to have formed an emotional link between the two countries. To me the call of the jay always makes the word "parrot" appear before the word "jay" & similarly with a yammering woodpecker, the word "kookaburra" forms first.
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Perhaps the link is to do with movement, freedom, adventure & surprise - our church site certainly provides all those. Or perhaps it is to do with still feeling a newcomer to this lush, tree-filled county of Herefordshire - my birthplace is a dry part of the UK that according to some definitions could be classified as a desert - in fact rather like parts of Australia!
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Ghost Gum picture Flickr aussi-gals' photostream.Perhaps the link is to do with movement, freedom, adventure & surprise - our church site certainly provides all those. Or perhaps it is to do with still feeling a newcomer to this lush, tree-filled county of Herefordshire - my birthplace is a dry part of the UK that according to some definitions could be classified as a desert - in fact rather like parts of Australia!
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