Trees are the best. And they are best in the mornings.

We had planted a Persian Lilac last year in the middle of our garden. It was almost like a long twig when we planted it. Now, a year later, it has a round canopy and has outgrown us by many feet. It must easily be about twelve feet high. I am sure we can swing ourselves on it, though I haven’t tried doing that for sometime. The last I tried was in the monsoon and the earth was quite wet. As I hung, the tree started tilting slowly from the base so I let go and straightened it, patting the mud back into place. But now the trunk is as thick as a child’s thigh and I am sure it can take our weight. Perhaps I’ll try in the winters. The tree sheds a lot these days, but we don’t mind. There’s always a round carpet of yellow leaves and slender twigs under it which look like nature’s clock. I can’t wait for the Persian Lilac to flower in the coming spring.

It seems to be competing with the banana tree, which also we had planted last year. We had gone to pay our telephone bill and the Post and Telegraph office had some bananas growing. We asked the maali to give us a cutting and he gave us one quite happily. The banana came up till our knees then. Now it’s also about twelve feet high and has made itself into three-and-a-half banana trees, looking like a small grove of its own. When the banana sprouts a new leaf, the leaf stands tall and straight and is an eye-pleasing light green. The older leaves are torn at the edges and look like they have grown beards or even wrinkles. I love to look at the banana in the rains and the way the raindrops form rows of wet pearls on its leaves.

The Persian Lilac is special because it attracts many birds. In the mornings, a laughing dove perches itself in the Persian Lilac and goes gur-gur-groo for minutes on end. Its mate hovers around, looking for it, and perches itself on the broadband wire going by the tree. Then it finally joins its mate on the tree and they both cosy up and gur-gur-groo softlyin each other’s ears. They are so close to me that I can see the blue grey on the edges of their wings and the black spottings on their necks. Maybe they have been scouting the Persian Lilac for a nest, though they aren’t building one yet. When the sun is up, a pair of Ashy Prinia makes regular visits to the Persian Lilac, hopping from branch to branch restlessly and jimmy jimmy jimmying loudly. They seem to treat it like a Jungle Gym. A hoopoe that visits the garden and digs holes with its hammer like head sometimes perches itself on the Persian Lilac, but he doesn’t spend too much time on it. He seems to prefer the uninhibited view from the wires.

One morning we found a single strand of gossamer, shining in the sun’s slanting rays, stretching from the Persian Lilac to the banana -- a distance of fifteen feet. It was obviously the handiwork of an ambitious spider, and we couldn’t figure out how it would have managed to get from one tree to the other without breaking the strand.

Since it is a rented place, we are likely to move out of the house early next year. The trees are like family members and we’ll have to leave them behind. I wonder if our strands of attachment will stretch too, without breaking, like the spider’s.