Goodbye Palm Tree
I really should have given our magnificent palm tree a name many years ago…. now she has died.
Dad spent so many hours in the garden. He planted the tree 30+ years ago and in those years it has risen to 14-16 feet high. (I could use trigonometry Sean to calculate the height exactly, but somehow it just doesn’t matter any more.)
The tree has flowered and flourished continually shedding its dead leaves, then a few weeks ago the green leaves suddenly drooped… and a few days ago they started to fall.
I once saw a squirrel leave an apple neatly placed in the recess where the trunk split into two… and just a few months ago I saw a beautiful green woodpecker in apparent shock at the hardness of its bark.
All the gardens for one hundred yards seem to have children of the tree… and there are at least ten in our garden…. all now dead or apparently dying.
Killed by the exceptional cold spell that nearly finished off me and mum when we were rushed to hospital in December.
But the real victim is a tree… perhaps the last great memorial to dad’s skill as a gardener and my lack of it.
I will never forget you tree and I am sorry I never gave you a name.
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