Time Flies

Especially when blogging takes a back seat, and the driver (me) steers a different course! However, like the proverbial bad  penny, I always turn up eventually...So here I am with a 'free gift' post, ready made, thanks to my Bro in new Zealand. One very early morning this week (3.30am) I gave up on sleep, and came downstairs to the computer, only to find a long email from him, which included this 'Tale Of A Tree'- he's given me permission to share it with you today.

 ".. We went past our old house - the first one we ever bought, the one we lived in for 14 years, from 1979 onwards, while the girls grew up; the one eldest daughter was married from; the one we were so sad to leave. We sold it to the Council a few years ago, when they wanted to widen the road, and there it has sat ever since, empty but cared for, lawns mowed, my old workshop used for storage. And there it stood yesterday, half-way demolished.

Mutti went back today with a camera, spoke to the gang taking the old place to pieces, and was allowed to wander through. Here's a couple of pics: the deck I built (well, the half of it that's still not gone), and the workshop that we built with friends and neighbours to help. So sad.

But one good thing. At the front is a tree. This tree we bought as a three-foot Christmas tree in 1974, but when Christmas was over, I looked at it and thought that, since it still had its roots, I would plant it. And it took, and grew, and for the next few Christmases we would dig it up, with its attendant soil, and put it back in a bucket in the house. When we moved, we told it we were going, dug around it carefully, took it with us and planted it in the next garden. Again, it took. Finally, in 1979, we dug it up again, again explaining what we were doing, and put it in our own garden. It's now huge and grand, and we were saddened to think our first Christmas tree would be cut down. But It isn't going to be. It's been identified as a rare Japanese cedar, and is now a protected tree. It will stand by the new road, proud on its corner. How's that?"