Opinion

Nuala McCann: Showing trees some proper respect

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

We are expecting a visit from an arborist.

Sounds rather fancy to me and our garden not much more than a postage stamp.

But our “mile-a-minute” clematis has lived up to its name and run rampant up the old sycamore tree at the back.

The golden leaf ivy has eloped with it and they are both clambering all over the neighbour’s garage.

It has turned rather Sleeping Beauty fairytale out the back.

The light of a summer’s afternoon has gone from dappled to barely there and we need the boughs of next door’s trees cut back.

If we’re not careful, the hedges shall grow up and up and up and we’ll all fall into 100 years’ sleep. (We might be glad of such a sleep).

Our arborist called briefly to have a look.

He is gentle in the way that anyone who spends times with trees must be gentle and wise.

He looked at our garden run wild, eyed our robin on the iron arch. That bird puffed up his chest and gave him a quizzical look… “My territory stranger, watch your step.”

Our arborist was drawn to my acer - touched its delicate fronds,

It was a present from close friends for a big birthday more than 10 years ago.

Spring is when the new delicate leaves unfurl, like a baby’s fist.

By autumn, the purple leaves turn crimson and fiery in a last blaze of colour before they fade and die.

It’s a lesson for all of us about time and living, seizing the day.

I worry that my acer’s feet are crushed in the big pot but the arborist thought it was happy.

Our smiling Buddha sits cross legged, head leaning on folded hands, under the shade of the boughs.

This love of trees stretches far back to the tall slender poplars that framed the view from our bedroom window.

I’d sit sweating over my chemistry homework, then pause to rest my eyes on Slemish far off; the regular slender lines of the poplars close by.

When I think of the poplars, my mother is whispering a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem close by:

“My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled.

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled.”

And eventually, ours were felled too … the roots grew too long and the neighbour decided to get them cut down.

But in May, in exam weather, I picture my younger self, sitting at the window and watching as the poplars “dandled a sandled shadow” and how the sunlight danced through the leaves and the beauty of spangled light on grass.

Our garden was not home to very big trees, there was a Magnolia stellata that burst out in white stars of flowers every spring.

In the long house clearance, I came upon a photograph of my sister under the flowering Magnolia – my mother had treasured it.

The woods near home framed our childhood too… the annual hunt for acorns; watching boys hurl sticks up into the branches to knock down horse chestnuts; prizing open the green prickly casings to reveal hotel-style cream satin bedding and a polished conker prize.

Those trees had seen generations of children come and go.

Trees can communicate with each other.

They have what is called the wood-wide web which thrives in ancient woodlands where the soil has been left undisturbed for centuries.

They share nutrients and warn each other of pests.

All the clans of Ireland had their own sacred tree and it is believed that the chieftain would have been inaugurated beneath that tree.

In long ago Donegal, my mother took me to Doon Well – the holy well where her mother had taken her.

Ribbons of cloth blew in the wind on the trees and bushes; there was a sense of mystery and holiness.

We have a respect for trees in Ireland – everyone knows of a fairy tree which cannot be touched so that even if the farmer has a beautiful cultivated field, the tree will stand in the middle, untouched for fear of bad luck.

Some people say it was the felling of a fairy tree that put the scud on De Lorean in Belfast.

But we are felling no trees.

Instead we are easing the burden on our oldest tree … helping it breathe more easily.

The sycamore, the rowan and the acer stand guardian to our home.

We are expecting a visit from a gentle arborist.

Summer is in the air.