Tree Story

Tree Story©

By

Michael Casey

I had a tree at the bottom of my garden for maybe 20 years, it was a Laburnum tree, or Golden Chain. My mother had one at the bottom of her garden for years and years, I don’t know where she got it from, but every May it was glorious, golden chains of flowers, really really pretty.

When I got a house of my own I decided that I wanted a Golden Chain or Laburnum of my own too, so I  took a sapling from my mum’s garden and planted  it at the bottom of my own garden, I think I must have taken the 4 foot sapling on the bus to get it to my house. After a year it flowered, glorious and yellow, a sight to behold, a perpetual memory of my mother who had green fingers as far as her elbows. She could dive into a hedgerow or into a municipal garden while on holiday in Weston-Super-Mare  and take a cutting then throw it into a plastic bag with a bit of water and then take it home 2 weeks later where she’d plant it and it would grow for her. Anybody else would have a dead plant, not my mother, she passed on her green fingers to my eldest brother who has a show garden.

Trees grow and twist and bend as they grow, wonderful shapes and patterns just like a contortionist at the circus, but so much better. So the tree always reminded me of my mum and her love for all her big family. I also have Shamrock growing by the wall outside my back door, again I brought it to my home from the family home, and again it reminds me of my mum and my old aunty from Ballyheigh in County Kerry, it was Aunty Mary who had sent us some maybe 35years ago. So plants and trees are a token of Love, I’m sure everybody can remember planting something with somebody, together something was shared and is special because it was shared together.

Yesterday I cut down my Laburnum tree it had outgrown the space there was for it, I don’t know shall we dig it up and replant or just scatter seeds all around, and have a scented blossom plant grow on the grave of the Laburnum. I’ll consult with my two daughters, we can wait a month for the cold snap to stop biting at our ankles and then we can decide on colours and smells. Having said all that a Cherry Blossom tree would be nice, just like they have in Japan, after all we are a  Shanghai family , and we do really have Japanese neighbours just 2 doors away.

Flowers and plants are really expressions of love, learned men and poets and gardeners will explain it far better than me. My mother’s parting gift was white flowers all over my sister’s front garden, our mother had died and a few weeks after she had died white flowers popped up all over my sister’s garden. Mum had sneaked up to the house and planted seeds, so after her death they were a smile from Heaven. And Nature itself is God’s smile.