APOLOGIES TO THE PLANET

I somehow don’t think my participating in the Earth Hour switch off of lights on Saturday night is going to make up for the guilt I feel today. I did extend it to eating dinner by candlelight and spending the entire evening without electric light, but yesterday I did a dastardly deed. I chopped down two trees in my backyard, two perfectly healthy oxygen producing carbon dioxide absorbing specimens which I would love to have allowed to continue to flourish, but common sense prevailed after two years of deliberation so out they came.

So why was this environmental vandalism perpetrated? Unfortunately, my late husband in all his wisdom, well, really he should have known better seeing as his horticultural knowledge was a darn sight better than mine, planted these two trees when they were just wee babes a few centimeters high, and we happily watched them grow over the years. What he hadn’t taken into consideration was that they were Blue Gums, and sweet baby Blue Gums have a habit of growing into Tyrannosaurus Rex size Blue Gums, not the things you want hovering close to your house.

So, I reluctantly thought it best to sacrifice them now at 6 metres high instead of waiting them for them to reach 30 metres and have them fall down of their own accord in one of our 100kph gale force winds we get every now and then. The last big storm we had a few months ago felled 14 trees on the golf course here, as well as several in the village, so I didn’t feel like being a future statistic whose shocked face is plastered on the TV screen with a monster of a tree occupying half the house.

Do I sound like I’m trying to justify my actions? Too right I am. My plans to replant a profusion of native shrubs of various sizes which won’t grow into monsters are already underway, so here’s hoping the void I just created will get filled up again with all the right things and I won’t feel like such a pariah.

To do penance maybe I need an Earth Month, or Earth Year, I’m happy to comply, starting with turning off this computer and going and having dinner in the dark again with the TV as the only illumination. There’s an oxymoron if ever there was one, though the idiot box can turn out some illuminating and inspiring offerings at times. Don’t think The Mentalist qualifies though.