The tree for me

There’s one image that pops up in my photos on this blog and social media—and I mean aside from those showing me or Leo—and that’s photos with one particular tree on my street. There are several trees on my street, but only one that I can see when I’m sitting in my chair in the living area, and so, that tree has been in numerous photos. Realising that fact led me to take a new photo of the tree, and to realise a sort historic anomaly,

Back in September, I took a photo of the tree after the time the September Equinox arrived in New Zealand. That made me wonder: How different would the tree look exactly one month later? So, on October 23, I took another photo at roughly the same spot I took the one in October. Those two photos are up top, and while I tried to make the two as similar as possible, but, well, its close enough, I guess. By October, the tree pretty much had its summer clothes on, looking as it will until late autumn.

The tree’s summer look is my favourite, and not just because it’s for summer, but also because the leaves help block the streetlight. Some evenings I like to leave the curtains open and the lights off as daylight turns to twilight, especially if the sky is pretty. That streetlight sitches on at dusk, as they usually do, and kind of ruins the effect—except in summertime when that tree shields me from the streetlight. It’s a small thing—a very small thing—but one that I noticed every year.

So, that tree has been in many of my photos, in whole or in part, in daytime and at night, but that made me wonder: Did I have any photos of the tree when it was still a baby? I shifted into this house in January 2020, and that’s nearly seven years ago, and the tree’s grown a lot. But, did I have photos of it as it grew up?

The answer turned out to be no—hey, it IS a tree, not a dog, cat, or person to whom I related. Even so, I must have a few, right? Well, it turns out I have one, taken July 19, 2020 (photo at right). That particular day, contractors were dilvering the new recycling bins for Hamilton City Council, something that Covid Lockdowns had delayed for months. I originally intended to worte a post about the bins, but never did. I don’t remember why I didn’t do that, but I know that the fact that the subject is kind of niche wasn’t the reason—when has that ever stopped me? I htink part of it was that in several of the photos workers faces were visible, and blurring them would make the photo look weird. I had other photos after my bins were delivered, and with no people in them, but by then I was over it.

At any rate, the tree was much shorter than that when I first looked at the house in late November 2019, but I didn’t take a photo then—or for another twn months. Still, it’s better than nothing, and it means my impression that the tree has grown a lot since I moved in is actually true. I feel so validated.

It kind of amuses me how that one tree has already become a fixure of my life in Kirikiriroa-Hamilton, and that if I stay in this house for a very long time, one day it’ll be a big ol’ adult tree, like what one might see in any established neighbourhood—which mine is already on the road to becoming, even if I seldom realise that.

Sure, it’s just a tree. But it’s also become a character in my own story here in this house. I should point out, for the avoidance of doubt, the tree has a non-speaking role. Even I’m in on the joke, you see.