I bought this tree seventeen years ago.
For years, I carried her from share-house to share-house. She weathered life in some very dim inner city room corners, stoically holding on with six very countable leaves. Yet, over those years I became affectionally attached to this beautiful Benjamina Ficus and made her whispered promises that I would one day plant her in the ground.
And so I did. When I moved from Sydney in 1999 I dutifully packed the still slender sapling in the moving truck and later found a place to plant it on a farm in the hills outside of Byron Bay.
Ten years later this tree stands at around 4 metres tall, with thick knarled fingers of roots, wide flung arms with graceful weeping leaves and the beginnings of aerial roots twisting down from above. It how has a riot of what must be more than 16,000 very uncountable leaves.
When I visited her recently I was filled with wonder. I find her growth a complete marvel. It’s not unlike watching my beautiful son morphing from child to man. This child who somehow, through some completely ordinary everyday miracle, that I made human.
And yet, it’s so unremarkable; this is a tree that’s grown from a seedling, like any other.
But this one has become a gift to me. With its story entangled with my own it’s transformed from an ordinary tree. As a consequence, I get to watch and grow with it, in awe-filled appreciation.