The big pluck: Part Two

Con­tin­u­ing from Part One.

So yes. Cyril Lim of Seng Gar­dens did take up the offer and on 19^th Novem­ber 2007, work started on dig­ging trenches around the base of the red palms.

It took days to dig those approx­i­mately one-foot deep trenches around the palms.

Appar­ently, the trenches were essen­tial to reduce shock expe­ri­enced by the roots of the red palms, thus improv­ing chances of sur­vival dur­ing the whole trans­plan­ta­tion process.

By some­what short­en­ing it’s net­work of extended roots, the red palms were left for about two months to adapt to it’s new state, deprived of much of it’s root system.

So our gar­den was left in a mess with trenches around the palms and unearthed soil every­where for two months. Some­times the trenches would fill up with water and we’d have mini-ponds in the gar­den. xD

We savoured the last few weeks with the palms until early Jan­u­ary 2008 when it was time to finally begin lift­ing of the palms.

Turn­ing yellow.

The day before the sched­uled lift on 18^th Jan­u­ary, the red palms started to have its leaves turn yel­low. And I mean really yellow. =\

A viable expla­na­tion was that the lack of rain for the past few days might have dehy­drated the palms.

If you’d ask me, I say that they look rather pretty..but the fact is that they weren’t doing well and my dad had wor­ries that Cyril might not want them any­more since chances of sur­vival would be less.

The big day.

18^th of Jan­u­ary came after all. The eight tow­er­ing red palms in our gar­den who had been with us for 5 years are sched­uled to go.

The labours from Seng Gar­den arrived already early in the morn­ing to fur­ther dig the trenches to enable eas­ier lift­ing later in the day. I went for lec­tures that morn­ing, feel­ing uneasy, and hav­ing last looks at the palms around my house.

When I came back from cam­pus later that day, this huge beast at our doorstep greeted me.

Part 3, any­one? xD