They Were Mine

Nowadays I don't notice nature the way I used to. Maybe it's because I've lived in pokey city flats with tiny strips of back-yards for years. Maybe it's because there are no grass verges on the footpaths in Hataitai, so I haven't crunched through morning frost in years.

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Growing up, there was a looming gum tree in the corner of our yard. It was the climbing tree with thick limbs for gripping and vantage points for sitting on. Its bark peeled off in satisfying chunks, revealing raw scars of sticky sap. Me and my brother could perch there, under a canopy of slender, peppery leaves that splayed like fingers, looking down on the maze of grass and weeds beyond where the lawnmower could reach. I dropped my mother's earing down there, never to be found (and never admitted). It was the tree with fuzzy caterpillars and leathery brown empire moth cocoons that made me shudder.

On the other side of the yard was the weeping willow. It was a standing-under tree where you parted the drooping sinewy curtains of summer-green leaves and entered another world. Bouncing on the trampoline I could reach over and brush my hand over its soft leaves or grip the sinews like the reins of a horse, gently pulling down the branches.

The crab apple tree would scratch against my bedroom windows in winter. Its scrawny skeletal arms had fingers of twigs prying in each direction - it was a witchy tree. In summer it scattered small red apples on the lawn which I squashed, sickly sweet, under my feet.

The plum tree hung heavy with fruit over the driveway. Deep purple plums grouped in threes or fours along its branches, among the flat brown leaves. I would hold the ladder for Dad as he gathered them up for Mum's jam. The silver cauldron gave muted metallic thuds as he softly dropped them in.

The cherry tree welcomed me at the gate. It sprawled like a giant, dwarfing the courtyard. Its roots pushed up the bricks in small valleys and peaks. In spring it formed a wet carpet of pink, bruised blossoms by the gate.

Near the washing line there was a stubborn little lemon tree. It looked lonely, never quite accepting its new position. On my way from the garage to the back door, every day after school, I would pick off a thick, shiny leaf and tear it in my fingers so I could taste its tart smell.

The gooseberry bush emerged from a mass of herbs and weeds. In summer it would have veiny, tissue-paper cases, like tiny lanterns. The fleshy berries, when popped out, made my face pucker.

There were the flax bushes, the daisy bush with fuzzy leaves, the snowball bush with flowers we could throw. By instinct I knew the change each season would bring to them and I knew the feel of their bark and how easily their leaves ripped in my little fingers. I knew the smell and taste of them. I knew how to shake a tennis ball out their branches.




One winter holidays I came home from Massey and my father had cut most of them down, on the adive of a landscape gardener. Part of his new five-year plan. The hole where the willow tree had been revealed an ugly corrugated fence and a large patch of grey sky. The yard seemed to have shrunk. There were neighbours everywhere, no longer filtered by leafy trees and branches. It seemed a small betrayal. I walked around the yard, noticing only the gaps and new grave-like patches of soil, where trunks used to be.

It was the end of something.