Tree Gazing

I have lived in Melbourne seven years now. Wow, when did that happen? It’s a lovely place to live and I have made many friends.

But the best friends I’ve made, I must say, are the trees. I have fallen deeply in love with the Australian gums. Their speckled and multi-coloured bark, their brilliant, often white, twisting branches, their beautiful soft green leaves. I miss them when I go traveling (back when you still could, pre-covid days). Now when I return to Australia, I always look out of the airplane window and wave at the white branches which I swear are waving back. There is a real sense of homecoming now when I see the landscape.

When I first arrived in Australia, I started taking photos of these trees because when I stopped and peered more closely, I couldn’t get over the brilliant colours and the exquisite patterns. About two years ago I began seeing faces in the bark peering right back at me. And now when I walk around my local park I say hello to them all (silently of course—I don’t want to be THAT lady.)

I have now created a website to house some of the photos and, more particularly, to highlight the destruction of native forests. Both around the world and in Australia. I have also joined the Australian Conservation Foundation and am on their letter writing team to voice our condemnation of the continued destruction. I urge you to also look into your local environmental issues and find a way to help. Time is running out. But the main thing is we still have time if we act now.

So if you’re curious or just want examine tree bark, have a look at www.treegazing.com

I hope you like it.

I’ve Gone Native.

Trees, that is. I’ve become obsessed with Australian native trees. Gum trees, especially. Their long willowy trunks which reach high into the sky. Their delicate drooping leaves. Their infinitely fascinating bark.

When I think I’ve done enough writing for the day, I like to swing by my local nursery. I’ve become best pals of a sort with the plant man at Bunnings.

You here again? he says.

Yup.

I walk along the aisles, happy as a pig in potatoes, drooling over the choices: cyclads, tree ferns, native grasses, pandorea pandorana…

Recently I’ve discovered CERES nursery in East Brunswick. Oh how my plant obsession runneth over. Here a treasure of Australian natives awaits: grevilleas, banksias, wattles, kangaroo apples, wattles, lilly pillies, blackwoods, chocolate lillies, lemon myrtle. I love the taste of the words in my mouth.

I want to encircle the hot dry garden of our new house with trees and spend many a waking moment deciding which ones. My first dream is to have a pepper corn tree, the most exquisite specimen, sage colored leaves like fine tooth combs waving beautifully in the wind.

Right now I flirt with smaller shrubs and see how they fare in the soil. At Ceres I found a luscious Grevillea Red Hook. Even the cashier was impressed. She looked longingly it at it. “You found that here? I didn’t see it. I’m jealous.”

I hold on to it firmly. I know a good specimen when I see one.

Same thing happened when I found two statuesque burgundy Agonis. “Wow, those are tall. I didn’t see them,” said another cashier with that same jealous look gleamed in his eye.

I’m starting to realize my competitors are not the buyers but the staff.

Today I came home with a dwarf mandarin for my son who will eat no other fruit, and a Silver Princess eucalyptus.

The Silver Princess eucalyptus is very young, barely a metre high. But I have fallen in love with the species. Tall and delicate, often leaning lopsided like she’s had a touch too much to drink. In season her white slim branches will cascade with pink little gum-nuts.

But I must get back to work now–Revisions await–and try not to think about the kangaroo paws I would like plant along the path. They come in all sorts of colors, salmon pink, orange, blood-red, red and green striped, even black. I’m like a kid in the candy shop.

Princess gum photos by Tatiana Gerus (flickr)

Peppercorn tree photo by macinate (flickr)

Kangaroos paw photo by Linda DV (flickr)

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