Kindness, and quietness, and calm

Whenever I go to a property, there is always that one Wrongly Planted Tree.

There is a lemon tree, which is four years old, and tiny, and it is in an awful place. It is hard up against a house, or in a very windy, exposed spot. It is in hard clay soil. It has never been watered. It has never been fertilised. Or we go the other way- there is a pohutukawa planted hard up against a house. It is looking great, and healthy. It is threatening to get into the roof, tear up the pipes, and no one can walk down the path anymore. People thought hard about this tree, they selected it somehow, they planted it somewhere.

I ask, why is the tree here?

The tree has been planted there because someone is scared of rats, so they wanted fruit further away from the house.

They wanted to play soccer with the kids, so the tree is nowhere near the lawn.

There is some noise of a deck being built, so no one wanted to plant it in the way of that.

The kids want to all join hands and do a circle around the tree, so the tree has to be in the middle of an empty space.

In the confusion, in the conflicting list of needs and pre existing beliefs, and wants- a tree was planted, here, in the best place that everyone could compromise on. Unfortunately, this location is not great either, and now you can’t use the washing line, and it keeps getting clipped by the lawn mower, and the neighbour is furious because they have no light.

After all of the considerations about all sorts, the tree’s needs have also been ignored. This tree needs the space to get to a certain size, with a certain amount of nutrients and sun and water. So the tree is in this spot, and it’s not doing what we want. And now Zoe has been called in, and Zoe is gently asking why the tree is there, and everyone is trying to not feel silly or mean.

Behold this Karaka tree, which would easily reach 8m tall, planted in the middle of the only flat space on the property, underneath two magnolia trees. I kicked it over. The cat was confused. It had been planted to conceal the shed from prying eyes, but obviously it would have shot up like the magnolias and left a big bare bit anyway- check out the other one by the fence.

I can totally empathise. I am looking at my beautiful quince tree, purchased years ago when someone wanted a quince tree hedge and subsequently forgot they had asked me to spend $250 on these trees, and I couldn’t return them, and I only managed to sell one or two. I love quince, so it is a happy accident (not how I felt at the time!)

But if I plant this quince literally anywhere in my garden, I will have committed to a tree growing in that spot for thirty-plus years. There are always downsides, from a social and human-needs perspective, to where one plants a tree.

It will shade out a larger area. It will stop me from being able to plant anything else too close to it. It will be the focal point of the bed. It has the same needs as most plants, so it is taking that spot from something else. I love the sun, and I will have less sun on my dirt, where I can sit, and all of the sun will be taken up by those damn leaves on that gorgeous tree that I did actually want.

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Friends, planting a tree is a commitment. And there are always pros and cons to doing anything like this- I have a beautiful, lovely daughter, but I sacrificed so many other things to raise her. I liked that beer I had last night but I do not like its effects this morning. I like this jacket but it does not keep out the wind.

And we all know the right thing is generally to plant the damn tree, have the kid, get off the couch and see your friends, enrich your life and make sure the planet is going to be a decent place full of nice things in the future.

I’ll get to the point

We’ve all met our share of awful people. I used to run a bar, and my old boss had bought the place to drink with his buddies. He was a lawyer, who would come down after work and lean on the bar with his gross friends, say some awful things about women, that they shouldn’t be in a professional setting.

The same boss had hired myself, a woman, to run the place. I was not the first female bar manager he had hired. He had also given work experience to my coworker’s girlfriend- she received a huge hand up from him in the legal profession, and his law office was full of female lawyers who he had hired. He was a moron, but he did not practice what he preached in terms of the rubbish which came out of his mouth.

So, while I stood there, listening to all sorts of trollop, I also knew that this guy is pretty decent to women in the real world. He was a perfectly fine boss in every other way. Much older me is wondering, why did he plant his tree there? What weird considerations have run through that brain in that lifetime, to end up here, where he brags about being a crappy human, but is great in practice?

The people around us right now may vote for people like Donald Trump. But they are also, often, people who try to treat us well, and make our lives all the better. They have made some decisions about where to plant their tree, and while we all think that they prioritised the wrong considerations- they planted a tree. They made a decisive step, and they are in some way or other trying to make the world a better place. If not *the* world, definitely *their* world, and we are in their world, and they do want us to be agreeable, happy people, and more often than not, they did make some effort to make that happen- even if they did the wrong thing.

The people around us haven’t changed overnight, en masse. They are a huge part of the world around us, and it is pretty unlikely that they will substantially change post-election. They have considered so many things that they got all messed up and backwards and their tree is in a silly place. Sometimes it feels like there never is a right place.

We need to care more about the people around us than we care about the people who we see on a screen. And we need to focus on the greater good, the best place to focus, and how to be a decent human.

A decent human plants a tree. Even if it is in the wrong place. They do not refuse to plant a tree, they don’t duck out and refuse to engage. They don’t just complain about trees on the internet or read about them. A decent human has a bit of a chat, gets some good advice, and they plant a tree.

Keep planting trees. The net benefit of another tree having its own little patch of land will always be greater than the cost to the humans around it.

When someone plants a tree in a funny place, we need to talk to them about why it is there, with curiosity and kindness. We need to accept that their tree will probably never be in the exact place we would put it. If we show them our trees, they will see the benefit in planting a tree in a good place.

And then we need to go home, put down all of our screens and devices, and tend to our own gardens.

Especially in Spring! Damn! I cannot IMAGINE your garden is looking pristine right now- everywhere I go, the grass is shin-height and the weeds are doubling by the day. Get out there and keep your chin up.