How much is a date palm worth?

from w
This morning a guy strolled across to us as we worked in the back garden. Peceli was chopping overhanging branches on the opposite side and I was picking up junk blown from that dust-storm a couple of weeks ago. The stranger said,'Is your palm tree for sale? It could be moved easily now without the fence and this open block. I'll give you $2000 for it.'

Well, Peceli thought, Hmmm nice money for it. I said, 'Hey, wait on. It's the best tree in our compound and is probably thirty years old or more. And the palm leaves remind us of Fiji.' The guy gave us his card and we said we'd think about it.

I rang a nursery and asked them the financial value. They said a tree like this would be about $1000 per metre. And ours is about 10 metres tall. $10,000! No, it's not for sale anyway. The nursery owner said that if it was to be shifted it would cost over $1000 to move. Also it would really deteriorate and nearly die for three years before it recovered from the move.

So I decided to draw this very valuable tree, by standing in the empty block facing the tree and behind it is our garage which is never used for a car. I used mainly pastels, then sprayed it to set the pastels. The smell has kept Peceli out of the lounge room for two hours! Then I messed about with variations using Photo-edit. The pic was too big for the scanner so that's why there are two pictures. Then I made a collage with Picasa.