We humans don’t usually celebrate, or mark in any way, a tree’s birthday. What would that even mean? In any case, I planted this tree as a small sapling 35 years ago: September, 1979. Now, it looks to be about 12 metres high, growing more than a foot per year. For much of its life, it faced the chop, due to my classic blunder of positioning it directly in front of our ‘borrowed view’ of Point Roadknight. For many years the family discussed taking it out, but finally decided that, one day, it would provide an attractive frame for the longed-for view-scape.

As some of my subscribers on Hi will have noticed, the tree often figures prominently in my Sunrise and Today’s Sunrise series. I have even had one or two people ask after the tree with some affection.