The Saga of the Old Oak Tree.

When we bought 'The Pines' we knew that trees would cut out the sun in winter but we certainly did not know the full extent of it. As soon as we moved in, in the middle of winter, we realised that the old oak tree in our neighbour Anna's section took our sun for a few hours in the day, and there are only a few hours of sunshine a day here in winter.

I have called it 'the old oak tree' but really it was a youngster as far as real old oak trees go, but here trees grow very fast.At a funeral we met the man who planted it when he was a boy of six.

One particularly cold winter Elaine went to see Anna to asked if it was possible to trim the oak, but she would have none of it, as there were elves, fairies and hobgoblins living there.

The main problem was that it lost its leaves well into the winter and after that the sun was filtered through the many branches and twigs. Each winter I would scheme that maybe I could do the old oak tree some injury through injecting arsenic or roundup into her trunk but unfortunately my upbringing would not allow it. And so the old oak tree stood there mocking me. Beautiful and proud.

Then just last year Frank, another neighbour,who oversees the section for Anna, called to Elaine and asked if she had seen what had happened to the old tree. From the fork about two metres up, right to the ground the trunk had split.

Anna called in a tree surgeon and other experts but all concurred that nothing could be done. Well I suppose she blamed me. Thought maybe I had taken a chain saw to it. I felt guilty of course, believing that my ill will had brought on the problem and I began to fell sorry for the tree, and saw how beautiful it really was. Then I expect she asked one of the priestly elves to say the last rights. So the day came last Friday when three tree fellers arrived with chain saws, mulchers and a tractor to do their dastardly act.

Now after three days all is quiet, the old oak tree is no more,crushed and cut into small pieces, lying on the ground, to be burned as fire wood next winter.A tragic end indeed and hardly just reward for taking our sun.

As for the elves, fairies and hobgoblins, I'm not sure where they have gone, but there are many other places in the garden for them.

Renovating the Pines House

With the one hundred and fifty year celebration coming up at the end of the year, there is much work to be done on the house. The front verandah needs it most, so I have started removing several layers of paint. The layers must tell a story,pale green, dark green, cream, white and some gunge which could be a pink undercoat, but cannot be removed with paint remover. I'm using a heat gun, paint remover and a sander. I have tested for lead but it always indicates negative. I can't believe that no lead paint was used over the past one and a half centuries so think I should get another test kit.The heat gun leaves the house with fumes which I'm sure are 'toxic', and I could also burn it down, so instead I'm trying to rely mostly on paint remover even though it is more costly.

Now what I find interesting is that the house was built an 1857. The builders would have been over twenty five years old so they would have been born before the settlers started coming. Most settlers came from the United Kingdom where houses were built of brick so they wouldn't have had the knowledge of building in wood. The joinery in the house is excellent, showing considerable experience in building. As I see it, only the United States builds houses like they do here in New Zealand, discounting of course Queensland and I don't see any Queenslanders coming here to build in 1857. So where did the knowledge come from?