A friend in the neighborhood

Maram oru varam - a tree is a gift!

Here is a friend we met for the first time in 2019, soon as we moved to farm hill. It was a hot summer and this tree was blooming red, and one could totally see why Palash is called the fire of the forest.

The picture below is from that time.

Then we slowly grew accustomed to taking the road to the next village on our morning walks, and would see him pretty much everyday, on the way. One day, he was all charred, someone had lit a fire to burn weeds and he was caught in the middle.

After about a couple of years, happy to see today that he is back in bloom.

And this season, not many Palash are blooming. Last year by this time, every tree around broke out in bloom. Don’t know what that means in terms of climate and impact, but our belief that trees are much more than what we think of them just gets strengthened a little more when we see such demonstrations of what one could call “willfulness”. 🙂🙂

These pictures are from today.

A long shot but you can still see the flowers.