Why would anyone – anyone! – plant a gum tree in New Zealand? This was the first thing that went through my head as I stared out a bedroom window at the latest natural disaster unfolding at Lush Places, a thought that was followed by a word spelled with four letters.
A mighty wind had just destroyed part of a large gum that someone – not me! – had planted in the nuttery a couple of decades ago for no good, or even apparent, reason.
This day’s 90km/h gusts had caused part of it to crash down into the cypress hedge that, fortunately, had held up the giant 12m branch’s massive weight so that it had not also gone through a fence on the hedge’s southern side.
This misadventure wasn’t the end of it. As the spring gale continued to batter the garden, what was left of the cursed gum, the third and last massive upright from its trunk, looked like it might come down as well. And if it did it would not land in the hedge but would take out a silk tree, the chook run and the chook house, too.
This is what gum trees do. They fall to bits or get blown over in high winds. Or they drop giant branches without warning during summer’s big dry. They are more menace than tree. So why, I always wonder, are there so many in rural Wairarapa?
It wasn’t the first time this particular cursed gum had caused trouble. The first of its three huge upright branches came down in a similar wind some years ago. It had dropped towards the house – though too far away to harm us – and damaged a fig tree.
On the upside, that close call had occasioned one of the first meaningful outings for my recently acquired petrol chainsaw, and it also provided a bit of firewood.
Ever since, the cursed gum’s two huge and remaining uprights had grown taller and taller. And with each year’s spring gales both had threatened to come down, too, but somehow remained standing.
Should we have cut down what was left of the cursed gum in the meantime? Yes. But that required a number of things to achieve, things I did not have: the expertise, the gear and the courage to do it.
Alternatively, we could have paid a large sum of money to a professional, someone with all the gear and know-how, to do it. But in these financially buggered times, who has the spare cash for that? Not us.
Now though, with one part of the cursed gum hung up in the hedge and the other threatening the chooks, we needed help.
As he stood staring at the downed gum’s crown poking through the top of the hedge, our neighbour Geoff, whose sheep graze Lush Places, agreed it would be a tricky job.
Downed trees always are, at least according to a book I bought years ago on how to use a chainsaw safely (“the average number of stitches from a chainsaw accident is 110”, it says helpfully in chapter one).
Still, Geoff reckoned he and his adult son Allan could do it for us – and cut down the part of the gum still standing without killing the chooks or the silk tree. A fortnight later, they turned up with all the gear: a tractor, a chainsaw, a quad bike, a truckload of experience and the quiet calm of professionals.
As someone who knew absolutely nothing about how to go about any it, I offered valuable advice. “Yes, I think you’re right, you should put the cable through the hedge at that angle and keep it tensioned with the tractor while I stand well clear,” I said, or something like that.
By mid-afternoon, the entirety of the cursed gum was finally down, the only victim of its ultimate demise being an innocent almond tree that didn’t get out of the way.
I suppose, once I’ve cleaned up the cursed tree’s remains from the nuttery, we shall have to replant. Just not a gum.
