The first tree - Jane V. Adams
Long-listed written pieces of 250 words or under submitted to the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition on the theme of “trees close to you”
The first tree
It’s there on my Facebook feed. A photograph of the first tree I loved. Onlookers are standing around its toppled trunk, the road’s blocked and a kid is riding his red bike past my old house at number 85. It’s raining and a dog is peeing against a fence.
Monkey puzzle trees aren’t in the least bit huggable but I’ve always loved them. Growing up in a London suburb their evergreen whorls and lollipop shape added an exoticism to what was a mundane era. Plus, they were where the monkeys lived.
It was well known, within our family, that monkeys lived in monkey puzzles, and, if you talked as you passed their tree, they would come down and get you. The thought of a troupe of marauding monkeys in Palmers Green was beyond exciting to seven-year-old me; I’d mumble under my breath to tempt them down but the monkeys must have been hard of hearing.
Facebook had seemed a safe place to detach from reality. Covid is infecting our lives. People might die. It’s the 16th of February 2020 and Storm Dennis has killed my tree.
Still in my slippers and without a coat I escape into my Dorset garden. Three Scots pine, two beech, one oak and a yew give me the feeling of safety I need right now. Their trunks stand like sentinels guarding the house - branches wrap and protect me.
And in a corner, still only ten-foot high, is a monkey puzzle tree.
Jane Adams is a naturalist, photographer and nature writer. When she's not walking Dorset’s country lanes she can be found writing about bees and trees. @WildlifeStuff
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