I’d like to report that we’ve been preoccupied with lofty matters lately. You know… stuff like metaphysics, quantum mechanics or the correlation between neurosis and religion. But really we’ve been talking about trees, branches and leaves.

Over the past few weeks my partner has spent a great deal of time sawing up fallen trees. Two have toppled into our neighbours’ properties – one on each side – and damaged the fences. While the first tree fell over four or five years ago, the second fell last Autumn. And we’re still trying to figure out a way to tackle the tree that collapsed into the dam on a windy day last Summer.

Perhaps the most worrying tree on the block is the eucalypt in front of the house. It’s leaning at an alarming angle to the bank behind it. A mere sapling when we first moved here, we were reluctant to remove it because it held together the clay bank that echidnas had begun to evcavate. It’s now about 10 metres tall and a couple of years ago, after heavy rain and strong winds, it began to lean.

Much too big for my partner to cut down, it will cost our landlords dearly – much too dearly, in fact – to hire a professional to remove it. If it fell, it would take out a good part of the front garden, including a couple of fruit trees.

We’ve secured it as best we can by attaching two ropes to it and tying them to two other trees on top of the bank. When the wind blows a gale, as it’s doing today, I check the ropes regularly.

Last week I spent hours raking thick leaf litter that had gathered in corners of the lower part of the block. I still have the blisters and it’s still not finished. After that I planned to thin a small forest of gum saplings and collect more fallen branches.

But with a severe weather warning for damaging winds today, it looks like we’ll be staying well away from anything remotely arboreal. I guess I’ll just have to switch to Plan B: Read magazines and eat chocolates by the fire. Or if my mood takes a nasty turn, tackle the housework.

With the wind busily uprooting more trees and wrenching branches from those left standing, I wonder why we bother at all.