On Saturday morning, @tim-beck and I joined friends and family of one of our dearest friends for his 60th birthday celebration in Pretoria. There were a few unusual features to this celebration:

• it was an alfresco breakfast on a Saturday morning in Pretoria - sunny and chilled
• we were instructed in no uncertain terms not to bring gifts
• two musicians serenaded us throughout the meal (I don't know about you, but I'm not that used to having someone play cover tunes over Saturday breakfast)

I had met the birthday celebrant, Gustav, in the early 2000s at work, and we became fast friends early on. When @tim-beck came into my life, and Elsie into Gustav's life, our 2-person friendship morphed into a delightful four-person friendship revolving in large part around what I dubbed the "Axis of Easel" - Elsie is an accomplished artist, so we've spent many hours enjoying her works in progress and her completed works. We've also had the privilege of visiting them in their second home in the Karoo in a delightful little town called Nieu Bethesda, a real artistic getaway community, but that's a topic for another day.

Back to Saturday's birthday celebration

We got into the spirit right away, catching up briefly with our hosts and some old friends as well as others we've met more recently through Gustav and Elsie.

Gustav made a couple of short speeches, mostly acknowledging family and friends and reflecting on how his parents had shaped his character and that of his siblings. The tone of the morning was one of gentleness, humility, warmth and love.

The food was outstanding, and besides a bit of bubbly, Elsie had decided that we should have fruit to drink, in the form of strawberry daiquiris and margaritas. This was more, er, impactful than the green tea I usually have in the morning but it was memorable.

So what was the awesome celebration idea?

Gustav decided he would rather give than receive.

So he gave...each family grouping a tree to plant.

Here's ours:

They gave us detailed instructions so we'd plant it well and take good care of it.

They also gave us some birdseed to attract birds to our garden while we're waiting for the tree to grow.

It's a river bushwillow, or combretum erythrophyllum

This tree is very popular with tree-lovers. Here's what Plantbook had to say about it:

A magnificent deciduous tree with delicate green spring foliage. The leaves darken and become glossy when maturing. In Autumn, they turn red before they get shed in winter. The grey-brown trunk is gnarled and crooked, giving the tree a unique and magical charm. In spring, the tree bears small, lightly scented greenish-yellow flowers. The fruit has a papery four-winged shell with a seed in the centre.

Suntrees also had a beautiful description of the tree and how it works within its ecosystem:

The River bushwillow is a fast growing, deciduous tree that will grow to a height of 5 – 12 m and has a lovely spreading crown that can reach a diameter of 9 – 10 m. A striking feature of this tree is the foliage. The leaves emerge during spring with a soft green colour, maturing to a darker green and exploding into yellow, orange and red hues during autumn, giving definition to seasons in your garden. Flowers appear shortly after the first green leaves and resemble creamy coloured puffballs. The fruits are four winged and light greenish to brownish pink in colour. Young fruits dry to a honey brown on the tree and will remain until the next flowering season. The River bushwillow is frost resistant and can withstand very cold conditions, making it an ideal Highveld tree. This tree is a lovely shade tree that can be grown on a lawn as a feature tree or planted next to pavements or driveways as it is not likely to disturb the paving.

A special and inspiring gift

Maybe I've been living under a rock and am not in tune with modern birthday practices, but I thought this was one of the most special ways of celebrating life on this little rock of ours. It's inspired me to think of doing something similar.

In the meantime, I looked up the river bushwillow's habitat, and as its name implies, it really likes to live, well, near rivers, and we don't actually have one running through our little garden. So we thought we'd pay it forward and donate the tree to one of the parks in our little suburb, so it can grow near a spruit (little stream), and when Gustav and Elsie come to visit we can go for a walk to visit Gustav's tree. In the meantime,

How awesome is that birthday celebration idea?

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