It's the tree that they forgot to love. The municipal tree, the one that graces the roadside, the boulevard, street corners and the local square. It's the tree that gets no notice. Yet it adds noticeable interest to an area of town. It adds monetary value too, giving leafy suburbs all their meaning and coveted charms.
Not only attracting wildlife and giving a sense of seasonality, the random tree adds further interest through splashes of green casting dappled shade in the Midsummer days, branches softly swaying in the light breeze - or swaying no more.
That's what happens after being repeatedly hard-pruned by local councils to the extent that the tree becomes no more than a rigid mutilated wooden stump, bearing the stigmata of incompetence and lack of common sense, surrendered to a state of vegetal zombification as it eventually turns bare for good, deserted by new growth after years of chainsaw abuse.
This is an ode to the tree that was planted for decorum, and one day stands in the way of further human development, the wider carriageways, the wider seas of concrete and the expansive malls. The defenceless tree that falls victim of that fragile balance where man co-habits with nature only to control it and shape it to suit his very needs.
This is the tree that was there and no-one cares...
Yes, let's hear it for the trees. We have some oddly pruned trees in our neighborhood, because we have overhead utility wires - which seems very primitive to me.
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