Each year, ten metres to the east of the last, another is planted. A centuries-old family tradition. Most of the trees grow tall and strong. Some fail to germinate. Some bear the scars of cold winters. Some lie uprooted by the gales. We used to stroll along the Boulevard of Ages, young to old: dirt became saplings, then spindly wooden teenagers reaching up, to wise old monoliths. And the thousandth metre and the fifteen-hundredth metre would look more alike than the five-hundredth and the thousandth. And the two-thousandth and the twenty-five-hundredth would be closer still. And soon enough we’d forget which direction we were walking.