Changing Landscapes

This has been a hard couple of weeks. We’ve had a logging crew arrive to cut down some of our most prized trees that had become dangerously tall. Mostly though, the landowners here didn’t want to continue pruning the trees along the power lines every year. So, our periphery past our lot on the street side has been altered from a towering tree line to wide open sky. After that activity, the team moved closer to our house. That was the worst part of their ear shattering, chainsaw cutting which we tried to avoid like a plague since the time when one of the biggies fell and the whole cottage seemed to jump up and down. It was very unsettling and there was no way to escape except to get in the car and drive away. Far away.
The most dramatic removals were done a few days ago. We lost all the large poplars lining our side fence opposite the chook house and all of the poplars at the other end of that fence, along with giant pines in the middle of the same fence line next to a barn. But they also left big swathes of trees and branches and such, sticks, twigs, brush lying around the desecration after a cursory cleanup of the large timber trunks with their impressive yellow tractor.
But it would get a lot worse on Tuesday when they took out two trees growing next to our kitchen and laundry room first thing in the morning. Those were left lying on the ground too, causing a great uproar with our chicken community as that is exactly where they promenade from at night on the way to their roosts in the huge pines behind the chook house. And it is blocking their parade as they fall out of their beds and journey up the pathway towards our house in the morning awaiting their morning meal. They are quite miffed actually that they can’t get through their normal route. But the very worst was to come as the enormous eucalyptus behind our barn was also brought down to the ground. That tree symbolized for me the raw kind of life we’ve had here in this starkly beautiful place. A very talented arborist planted many of these unusual trees in this space and did create such a magnificent feeling with these very trees. He gave the whole place such exquisite specimens and placed them gracefully in their perfect spots. This structuring of the rectangular space of the back gardens gave it such balance and a sense of grandeur as these trees matured. Now that space has been opened up like wounds in my heart.
I suppose too, that by leaving so much debris strewn all around the backyard and nearby paddock, it’s made me feel like we’re in a war zone. But there is a war going on now in the middle east and so who am I to mourn over these trees?
We still have a breathtaking garden in most places. Who are we to complain? We are lucky to be here in a peaceful outback locale. Luckier than most. Much luckier.