When tree lopping fuels the imagination

When my children were aged about one, three, four and five, I used to make small events grand in their eyes. Big events happened all the time. The postman popped the mail into the letter box. The garbage man hefted the rubbish out of the bins. And the milkman delivered the milk.

These were anticipated mega events in the lives of my children whose entertainment was mainly built with cardboard cartons, paint, sheets for cubby houses, hours spent at the local park and tons of stories and imagination. Each activity filled a page of my intended book. Each activity involved a picture and a child with big eyes and a sense of wonder.

In those years, my children got to know our postman (Les), they had a short ride on the side of the milk van and they and the garbo had a lusty arm waving relationship. When we heard the noise of the bike/truck/van, my excited bunch would race outside, fresh faced and ready for the spectacle.

And so it was on a recent Monday when I was looking after my four-year-old grandson, coincidentally on the same day that we were getting a number of tree lopped. There he was with ear muffs on, watching the boys felling the trees, skillfully avoiding power lines (and one small boy). We both oohed and aaahed as the trees were fed into the mulcher, instantly turning them from logs into mulch.

We imagined tree frogs jumping out the mulcher just in time. We imagined the mulch turning into paper and us drawing pictures of the men cutting down the trees on the paper. We said goodbye to the trees with branches that were hollowed out and some that were just too close to other trees to successfully thrive. We talked about our favourite trees (his and mine were both taken down). We felt sad to see the holes they left behind, then happy to see the light of the new space created.

We sat on the back veranda together and drew pictures of the canopy of trees untouched. We talked about the wonder of these great big beasts in our garden.

And then we raced out the front because we heard the sound of the postman's scooter.

- Linda Muller