Just So Much Sawdust

After a busy morning without my camera, I was about to venture out blip hunting when the rasping sound of a chain saw fairly close to the Dower House alerted me to the demise of yet another old tree in the Meadows.

This one has succumbed to Dutch Elm disease which has rampaged throughout Edinburgh over the last decade or so.
It is always so sad to see the felling of a tree of this age and this one leaves a gap in the avenue of trees in Middle Meadow Walk.

I must have walked past it thousands of times in my long and glorious life, which is but a fraction of the time of its life, and paid little heed to its presence.
I will certainly notice its absence now that it is reduced to a freshly wounded stump.
No doubt my Grandmother and Grandfather also passed it on their way into town. Could it be 200 years old? Maybe, but I didn't have time to count the rings on the bole of the bottom bit of the trunk as it lay askew on the ground.

The analogy with our lives is hard to escape , especially when I saw the smaller pieces being fed into a machinator to turn them into sawdust and life in the vicinity going on as usual except the elm tree was no longer part of the action.

A new tree will be planted and if the yobs who systematically break saplings in the Meadows, leave it alone, then one day it too will become big and commanding, but I will not be around to see it.