My Tree is Dead
I killed my tree today. My hardy Eucalyptus, with its cut foliage for flower arranging and its wood production for firewood, biomass and paper production. Its seed was sourced from the cold and high altitude areas of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. And I killed it today. Not myself, of course; I didn’t have the backbone for that. So I took out a contract. I paid a man to perform the hit and he took the sanction, for a measly £280. I tried to be all Michael Corleone about it – Michael had no qualms, he had no remorse. I failed. I thought I might identify more readily with the hunch-backed jester who bought the assassin Spartafucile to slay the Duke of Mantua. But Rigoletto lost his daughter Gilda instead, and frankly, he wanted the Duke dead anyway - his assassin botched the job, that’s all. No, that wasn’t me either. I didn’t want to terminate the tree, I was only following orders. It had grown insanely out of control and thought to have been commanding its roots from a neig...