Friday, June 25, 2010

Farewell, Coconut Tree

Sometime last month, when I just arrived at my parents place and saw some activity going on outside. My dad finally chopped down their coconut tree!

When they first bought the house, the coconut tree wasn't fruiting. Then, when we had a house blessing, Pastor Foo prayed over the tree to bear fruit. After a few weeks, it started to flower and has been us a steady stream of coconuts since. It was one of the most obvious successes of the house blessing and the story of the prayed for coconut tree has gone around amongst our church friends.


Dad has been the one chopping the fruit down and I had always taken it for granted until one day I decided to go see how he did it. To my horror, he would precariously balance his ladder on unstable ground, sometimes wedging it with bits of spare plank and stand almost to the top of the ladder while he sawed away at the branch. Even when I helped him that day, I was sweating profusely, trying to pull a branch away so that he could get to the fruit. And I was SOO worried he might just fall off the ladder!


Soon, it got too tall and Dad was climbing higher and higher on his ladder to reach the fruits. He started talking about how expensive it was to get someone to chop it down. So when I saw the remnants of the tree lying and waiting to be carted off, I felt sad for the loss of the fruit and tree but glad that my Dad need not risk his life unnecessarily.

So, here's some photos (blogspot photo arranging is irritating me with the alignment) of the felled tree, the coconut we threw, how the back of the house looks bare without it and the last batch of its fruit.

2 comments:

Ron said...

so kesian! I loved that coconut tree and fruit...will he plant another tree from one of its fruits?
I've always found it amusing that mum and dad always find trees get "too big" even though that's what they're supposed to do! Over here in Australia, people value bigger tress i.e. the taller and larger the tree the more $$$ its worth, sometimes adding a significant value to a property (in the thousands literally!)

Grace said...

The coconuts are a bit more dangerous because the fruit just falls unexpectedly when it is ripe. While I will also miss that tree, I am glad to hear that Dad will not be climbing up that tree too!