TALKING TREES

Sitting in my home office I look out on the wonderful trees across the lane, which is unseen below my window. I hear the sounds of ladies in heels delivering their children to the school bus stop. The children are always full of life and the ladies discuss their husbands and the telly of the previous night. This morning they could not BELIEVE that Ms Perkins had beaten Goldie in 'Maestro'; neither could I.

After the children have been banged up in their big booming bus, the lane returns to its peace and quiet.

I say 'peace and quiet' but actually it is never quiet. Peaceful, yes. The trees have their own voice, which through the year changes. In the winter, the wind slices through the cold and wet black branches and rattles and thrashes the entire structure of the beasts. They hiss and chatter in the Siberian winds.

Then it turns to spring and they cloak themselves in fresh bright velvety leaves. They speak an altogether different language now. The are wrapped in a warm cloth coat and they shrug off the wind's attempts to enter. It is a silenced, soft rush of air that swirls around the tree in whispers.

Now it is Autumn and again there has been a change. The trees are now rustling; thousands of sheets of old, dull paper, tussling with each other. The branches once more have a voice. They start to complain as they are heaved about in the swirling gusts, creaking and cracking. Leaves are now a dull green, tired after a long summer.

Trevor still leans nonchalantly ever closer to my thatch. His weary body strangled by ivy and his silvery brown leaves mostly in the grass box of the Hayter and the compost heap. Trevor's days are numbered.