It casts a dappled shadow over the yard most of the day except a corner of the back where I try to grow vegetables in straw bales. It drops leaf litter and branches down onto the cracking, shifting concrete path day in day out, so that if you never swept, eventually the concrete would be covered and disappear under it completely. In its sprawling branches live a gang of Red faced wattle birds. Other native birds visit the Blackwood to drink nectar from the flowers. New Holland Honey eaters, a couple of unspecified species of lorrikeet, or Rosella, or native parrot and even crows in habit the leafy fingers of this large meandering, not exactly attractive Gum. It was a hindrance to my desires when we first looked up into its canopy. But it was in fact the tree that sold us on coming here. Drew, us on, like something unnamed in our hearts. It doesn't have a swing. But I spend a lot of time meditating on the life that festoons its jagged, twisting limbs. And we have worked with it. Around it. Under it. Slowly transforming the space under it and even using some of its dead branches in the construction of a fence. And the shade it affords the dried out lawn through the summer months is a pleasure to sit under.
Its an ugly old thing. But it has a certain charm about it. Becoming over time, as we have lived with it, a sort of companion
