Tree through the window

Walking along Scalabrini Ortiz Avenue, around the 1300 block, in the neighborhood of Palermo—almost reaching Córdoba Avenue, on the border with Villa Crespo—one could come across a house with a window from which a lush tree emerged.

The curious thing was that the tree actually originated inside the dwelling and had found its way upward, seeking the light through the window.

The house was old, featuring an all-white facade with tall, aged doors, two lanterns, and high windows with balcony-style railings—iron grilles covering the bottom half. It was located right across from an old church and a police station.

The window from which the tree emerged was the tallest one. Taking into account the height of the wall plus the grille, it reached around two meters high, and that was where the tree snuck out.

That exact window had a second interior grille that covered the entire opening, yet the tree still pushed through, "eating" the iron bars—meaning some of the bars ended up embedded inside the tree’s trunks.

I had seen something similar before, though on a smaller scale: an iron piece from a trash basket tied to a tree that, over the years and with the tree's growth, had been swallowed by the trunk, leaving only a decorative face—part of the basket's ironwork—exposed.

How did that tree manage to grow so large? Was it planted on purpose, or was it left forgotten? Or did it arrive by chance? No one knows and no one ever will, but what is certain is that it spent a good amount of time living there to grow to such a size—especially considering that the photographs show only a portion of it.

By the year 2010, the house was demolished and the tree was sawed down. Currently, as of 2014, an eight-story building has been built on the site, as shown on Street View in Google Maps.