Tree part 7

Our guest’s arrival foreshadowed the beginning of the rains. For days, our home has rocked and swayed with the winds that attend the rainfall.

‘The city’s battened down’ relays Jen after receiving a message. ‘It doesn’t seem so bad here’.

‘We are protected by kilometres of trees that absorb a lot of the wind’s impact, though the winds have been getting stronger as time passes’ says the oldest of us.

‘Weather patterns are going through a period of intensification indeed, though the rate and severity of that increase are all within predicted parameters. It’s one thing we’re very good at’ Jen states proudly.

‘It’s still nice to be nestled in the love of the trees’.

‘Yes, and there’s no chance of flooding, we’re surrounded by a ten thousand hectares of living sponge to sop it all up’.

‘The city still suffers overflows now and then but the engineering works have alleviated a lot of it. In the past it has all been so intermittent and wild but now, its settling into a range of constants that we can deal with’.

‘You are capturing a lot of it though’?

‘Yes, around 30 percent in a normal year. The rest goes to ecosystem flows. Last year, though, because of the hot spell, we had to release some out to nature. We’re part of the natural system afterall’.

‘In the early days of the collapse, it was thought that we might even have no water here. Glad that was wrong, weather patterns shifted so severely that we now receive what used to be tropical rains. Sadly though, that is at the expense of millions of good people’.

‘The Tree program and the reafforestation has contributed hugely to stabilizing, or at least buffering, the weather here. Now that we’re into the third decade of the program, you could say that we’ve affected the local cimate. It’s made predicition easier anyway’.

There is a lull in the wind and rain so we decide to go outside to see what’s been happening.

The glade is full of leaves and small, broken branches. Not unexpected and Tree hasn’t taken any major damage.

‘She needed a bit of a pruning’ laughs one. If you looked closely, you could see Tree shake ever so slightly, dropping a deluge of water on us.

We giggle and laugh and most manage to get out of the way. Jen is pulled away from the worst of it.

We are used to our home’s humour.

**Bold*****

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