Mother's Day

The road and the town were quieter than usual this morning, even for a Sunday. Perhaps people were getting mum breakfast in bed for mother's day or getting ready to go out later for lunch with relatives. I'll have the quietness anytime. The sky was grey and the air still, enough autumn colour yet to set an interesting scene.

I've been impressed this year by the autumn foliage on the beech trees. We have 6 young ones at home, about thirty at the farm, and there are quite a few scattered around Emerald, including a number in Nobelius Park. A mature copper beech there at the bottom of the driveway is a superb example of the graceful majesty of this tree, perhaps the best I've seen.

I won't be seeing my mother today. Our family has never put much store on mother's day, other than dealing with the frantic week it causes work wise, as the florists are busy and our customers require twice or more what they normally buy in the week prior. But during the week I gave mum a couple of ox tails from the butcher as a mother's day gesture. Never one to bother much with cooking, Elvie has soft spot for ox tail stew and is quick to have a pot on the stove slowly cooking the oxies and vegies.

Ox tails, flower posies, and beech trees always will connect my thoughts to Elvie. Ox tails because it's a treat we've shared in recent years, and posies and beech trees because for almost as long as I remember she has worked with them. In childhood I remember Elvie cutting copper beech foliage for her florist shop from a tree in the Forster's garden in Mt.Waverley. Graeme 'Bubsy' Forster was my best mate in the last year of primary school and the early years of secondary school. His parents Bill and Ethel, who both died of cancer in the late 1970's, were warm generous souls happy to have their tree pruned as beech trees do grow big and love to be cut. Elvie had another tree in High St. Rd. just east of Warrigal Rd. and another in Malvern in the garden of her butcher, Mr Eames. These trees she used as back up when her weekly supply from the growers fell short.

In my mid teens I worked in Elvie's shop for a few weeks after school finished for the year, to earn some dollars, before Christmas, while the shop was busy. I was of course a junior assistant in the shop with duties like keeping the floor swept while the florists were busy putting together arrangements and wreaths etc, washing vases, making tea, answering the phone, running errands, doing up the bank, typing up accounts, and sorting the foliage that came in from growers, some of it of course beech in all its summer glory. It was my favourite task, tidying and splitting the stems and arranging the foliage in large urns of water up against the the back wall of the shop display. Mr.Peterson came down each week with his foliage from Mt. Macedon and Henry Kowalski came from his garden at 'Blue Haze' at Emerald. Henry called in on his way back from the market and by this time, still early in the day, he often smelled of strong liquor. Who would have thought at the time, that twenty years later I would become good friends with Henry's wife. Henry died many years ago but 'Blossom' remains a dear friend to this day.

I believe beech, oaks and sweet chestnuts are of the same family, the royal family of the broadleaves. If the sturdy oak is the king, the beech is the queen. It has a feminine grace and charm, almost daintiness, unusual in big trees. The bark is smooth and fresh and the foliage at any time has richness in colour and texture. In autumn it gleams rich, golden, yellow and brown.

My tree of the week, on mother's day, copper, green or purple, is the beech. Fagus sylvatica. Any desire I have to visit Europe, it would be foremost to see the beech forests of Buckinghamshire and Normandy.