Life Springs Eternal in Tenerife, Or So It Seems.

I predicted this would happen back in April, but I couldn’t have known just how true my words would ring.

Despite it being less than five months since the theft of the avocado tree, the garden is once again being thrust into shadow by the ambitious branches of the fruit tree with growth attitude.

Regular readers of the chronicles of Real Tenerife life will be all too familiar with the saga of the avocado tree. But for those who have not hitherto had the pleasure of sniggering at my seemingly endless capacity for being thwarted and duped by a tree, here is a potted (ouch) history.

For seven years we have lived with a giant (and I do not exaggerate here) avocado tree in the back garden. Visible from satellites, a Google Earth landmark and a major contributor to North Tenerife’s green canopy, the magnificent avocado tree has caused endless toil for me.

From this…

Constantly shedding its leaves, autumn has been a perpetual visitor to the garden, filling two garden refuse bags with its leaves every single week. When Tenerife storms have hit I have cowered inside the house, watching as huge branches have been torn from the tree, smashing against the roof and sending tiles showering onto the terrace. When spring arrived, the avocado tree sent seeds raining down onto the terrace in thick carpets that attached themselves to my feet and carried through the house. Attempts to clean them up were mocked by raining more down in their thousands even as I swept. And when the season turned to mellow fruitfulness, it rained avocados the weight of small bricks onto the terrace, narrowly missing our heads and causing mortal injury worthy of mention in the Darwin Awards which “salute the improvement of the human genome by honouring those who accidentally remove themseves from it”. I’m pretty sure death by falling avocado would get me in there.

…to this…

But this spring, after a storm too far we finally arranged to have the avocado tree pruned to within our future grasp and, like the Forth Bridge which has finally given up its paint brushes, to finally put a stop to the endless round of maintenance. But even then, the tree managed to have the last laugh, refusing to give up its troublesome branches for firewood and choosing instead to aid and abet a bunch of daylight robbers.

And now, not content with the trouble, anguish and fury it has caused me over the past almost eight years, the avocado tree is back.

…and now this.

In less than five months, most of them drought ones, the tree has grown back to such an extent that it’s now casting a shadow once more across the garden, and its uppermost branches are threatening to escape into infinity and beyond where they clearly believe they belong. If this is the rate of growth in the dry season, imagine what it’s going to be like in winter? We’ll wake up one morning and, like latter day and appropriately named Jacks, our beanstalk will have reached the heavens. Alas, I know from experience there’s no golden goose up there, just a load of bad eggs.

Pass me that tree saw.

Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is a freelance travel writer and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites. Published in The Telegraph, The Independent, Wexas Traveller, Thomas Cook Travel Magazine, EasyJet Traveller Magazine, you can read her latest content on Google+

About Andy 46 Articles
Andrea (Andy) Montgomery is a freelance travel writer and co-owner of Buzz Trips and The Real Tenerife series of travel websites and travel guides. Author of the Pocket Rough Guide Tenerife & La Gomera, and co-author of The Real Tenerife and Walk This Way Tenerife, Andy is an award-winning member of the British Guild of Travel Writers; former Tenerife destination expert for The Telegraph and has been widely published in the UK travel media including The Independent, Wexas Traveller, Easyjet Traveller and DK Guides.

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