Tuesday Treasures

Today I'm joining Melody at The House on the Side of The Hill for Tuesday Treasures.
The Singing Trees

My Treasure for this week is the line of wonderful Casuarinas which are on our western boundary. These trees were planted by the lady who lives next door about 13 years ago and are quite large now. These interesting trees have branchlets instead of leaves and racemes of golden-copper coloured flowers on the tips of all the branchlets. When the long flowers drop they stick to anything they touch and hang in plants underneath and near the trees making my lemon trees look like they have caterpillars all over them.

BUT!

The main reason that I love these trees is - can you guess? .....

...... It is the beautiful song they sing as the wind tosses their massed branchlets
*****

I first heard them at Hillview, a property in NSW that my uncle managed. There was a stand of them on a hill where I would go and sit, waiting for the wind to blow.

As the warm breeze picked up in strength this haunting, soulful song would see me sitting for lengthy periods, eyes closed almost meditative, reluctant to move or go back to the house.
***
Later on I found some seeds under trees which I was stunned to find growing near to where we lived, far from the outback property.
The following poem was written as a result of that serendipitous discovery
*****

Beautiful floppy, droopy casuarinas

Casuarina flowers

*****

The Singing Trees

Growing slowly on my lawn, are three precious trees

One day when out walking I collected their seeds.

A stand of trees I didn't know were growing near the creek

Till one day I noticed them, in utter disbelief.

***

Many years ago, up Balranald way

My uncle managed land, where we would go and stay.

It was a joy to visit there, and listen to the quiet

To rest from the noise, and curse of city life.

The house was surrounded, by red, sandy dust

Most would hope for still days and hated windy gusts.

There was one place I welcomed the wind as it blew

The hill where my special trees waited for their cue.

As I walked there I hoped, the wind was strong enough

To toss and throw the branches and whip them into song.

The noise I can't describe, some would say the howled

But to me it was the music, of a singing crowd.

I sat and closed my eyes, as they caressed my ears 

With the soulful song they had practiced for years.

I remember so well, that very last time

When I listened to their music, their singing sublime.

No more were we to travel there, and visit this place

This solitude, this outback, this vast red, blue space.

The sky too blue to be possible and earth as red as rust

Yet trees still sing and live for years, growing through its crust

***

My little trees can't sing yet, they're still much too small

But how pretty they look there, growing in my lawn.

Like dear little Christmas trees, in the morning light

With webs strung out with dewdrops, from the last cold night.

We'll just have to stay, till their branches are long

And the wind can coax them, to sing their first song.

The space isn't blue and red, but the song will be the same

To take me back in time and space, to where it all began

Bronwyn Barton

26/5/2005

(Allocasuarina verticillata)

We did stay long enough to see those little trees grow big enough to sing. I remember it too. I sat beside those 2 metre high trees and closed my eyes once again as I did that last time at Hillview. 

This time though, I was serenaded by their very first song.

*****

Now I can hear them as I hang out the washing or tend to the chookies thanks to Cheryl next door - Lucky me!