men's work

Eighteen odd years ago, when we first moved here, M brought home a small, nay, minute, gum in a tube. He planted it in a large vacant area out the front of the house. That wee treeling struggled to establish itself amongst the tangle of long grass and the thoughtless assaults of kids and dogs. Eventually it got some roots down and grew a bit. And a bit more. Then a lot more. Then heaps and ridiculous heaps more.

That feeble few leaves on a two inch tube plant identified itself as a Tasmanian Blue Gum. The same Tasmanian Blue Gum that grows to 100 feet in the wild and up to 150 as a specimen.

It kept growing. The pale round juvenile leaves were replaced by the dark green adult straps. The bark shrunk and peeled from the ever expanding branches. The tip towered over the house and the canopy shaded everything for yards around.

About five years ago we bit the bullet and got the tree loppers in. With much mess and noise, they reduced our towering timber to a manageable height.

It looked deformed and ugly for a few weeks before it set about doing what it had proved to do best. It grew. New leaves were followed by new twigs and then great heavy boughs. The tip soared up toward the sky once more.

Last month we got a notice from Synergy. Some of the Blue Gum branches were getting too close to the power lines. We were ordered to cut it back or they would massacre prune it for us.

This morning Mr Hamilton and his boys arrived to do the job. They brought a cherry picker on a huge truck because this is what was waiting for them.

With one in the picker (attacking with various chansaws) and two on the ground, they slowly reduced the crown to,well, to a handful of bald sticks (albeit very fat sticks).

This is what our majestic gum looks like now.

It is still over 40 feet high but a lot less pictureque.

They also removed a couple of branches off the curly willow that were hanging over the roof (breaking a tile in the process), chopped a misplaced ficus off at the socks, trimmed a wedge into the lemon tree that we had stupidly planted under the supply line and gave the bougainvillea a good hair cut.

All the off-cuts were collected up (right down to the last fallen leaf) and loaded into a huge munching machine to be turned into instant mulch and spat out into the truck that towed it.

It was a busy and noisy morning (and did bad things to my chequebook) but it accomplished a job that needed doing.

Oh, and they gave my cotton palm a bit of a trim too.

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And, for those of you that asked for an explanation....

"I don't often barrack for (root for) the poms (English). In fact, not often equates pretty much to never.

Yet, tonight, I almost found myself singing God Saves the Queen in my excitement at the possibility that they might wipe the arrogant scowl off Sebastien Chabal(a French rugby player)'s hairy mug (face).

Carn (come on) the Poms (English team)."