A personal response to the lecture “Planting Trees in Your Heart”

This is how trees got planted in my heart. My father’s hobby was gardening. We had a very nice garden, with a big central lawn you could lie on in the summer, a vegetable patch at the back, fruit trees and flowers aplenty. As a child, I used to spend a lot of time with my dad when he was working in the garden, following him around, asking questions and learning all about growing, living things. On Sundays, he would take me to the park to feed the ducks, and as we walked under the trees together he would point out the different varieties and tell me about the birds and the animals that lived there. One day when I was not much more than four or five years old, my father showed me a wonderful thing: how to grow a tree! He took the pips from an apple, put them into a plastic bag with a little bit of water and then placed them in a warm airing cupboard to sprout. A few days later when shoots had begun to show, we planted them in pots and put them out on the windowsill so that they got lots of warmth and light. Then when they were big enough, we planted them out in the garden to fend for themselves. Somehow, these tiny trees made it through the first winter. I can still remember my father coming into the house excitedly in early spring and saying “Michael’s trees survived the snow!” And so over the years we tended them and they grew, and today they are bigger and taller than I am and carry a glorious burden of big tasty apples every autumn. My father was from Ireland and often joked that one day we would move back there together and “grow our own forest”. I think he was secretly a little disappointed that that never really happened. I suppose I’m secretly a little disappointed too.

Perhaps, that’s why the talk that I attended on Sunday had such a profound affect on me. At one point, during the slideshow, Mewby whispered to me “Are you crying?” I shook my head. No. Of course not. Then once she’d looked away again, I quickly wiped my eyes. This man, Clive Nicol, has grown his own forest! I thought. What a wonderful man!

But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s backtrack… [Read more…]