Oh! and an update on a tree!

Talking about plants "talking" elsewhere and it reminded me!

I was up picking up horse poo the other day, up around the gum tree I'd transplanted up by the roadside. It was a year or 2 old when I asked hubby to dig it out from where it was so I could shift it (property plan had changed a little!) Pete dug it up but busted the roots up pretty well, knocking off the tap root, figured it wouldn't live so chucked it in the garage to take to the dump. I rescued it and transplanted it to where another baby gum tree had been planted and then pulled out and chewed up by Mac!

I asked the tree what it wanted/needed in order to keep living... it had been scared of being eaten like the last one so all it wanted was me to promise to keep it safe from the horses. I put a drum over it and then taped that corner off completely so the horses couldn't reach it at all. It was touch and go for a while, leaves dried up and went brownish, took it some water over summer, gave it some energy "healing" when I was up there in that first wee while, and gave it lots of pep talks.

That was perhaps 2 yrs ago now. The drum came off it last year and when I was up there the other day I untaped the corner. The horses now wouldn't be able to reach the top branches/leaves anyway and now it's not so teeny it won't taste good. I just checked in with it, not to ask it anything in particular, just to feel it, and make sure it wasn't screaming in fear with the horse eating the grass around it, and it felt like an adolescent!

Really strange to feel that young maturity there, where it had been nothing but fear and pain when I first spoke with it :o)