I was chatting to Colin Carpenter recently. It was late in the day and the weather was mild. We were in a chatting mood. Colin runs the Community Tree Trust from a nursery in Maulden and it seems we share a fascination for the natural world as well as a lifelong obsession with trees. We […]
About eighteen months ago I cut two small ash trees down as part of an effort to make some space for our embryonic charcoal business. These had both been planted in our small wood, Bottoms’ Corner, in February 1999, and had reached a diameter of about fifteen centimetres or so. Their absence meant […]
There’s a lot of it about this year; cow parsley that is. I’ve noticed more of it than usual along roadsides and hedge banks all over the country. Quite often, in spring, it’s easy to be overcome by the profusion of everything after a long winter of grey and brown. It’s usually the very greenness of […]
I am very fond of swifts. Apus apus, that torpedo like aerial master that appears here in the UK during early May and is gone by mid-August. Alongside their cousins the swallows (RAF chaps of 1940s vintage with huge moustaches) and martins (pleasure fliers – talented yet amateur), swifts are NASA pilots, destined for special and […]
I was struck by the completely amazing nature of trees and wood in a kind of revelatory way this morning, brought about by some odd but trendy box hornbeams in central Milton Keynes. These are a rather extreme example of trees’ generosity – especially if you like your trees cubic. If a material scientist or […]
It’s just starting. Along hedgerows, in gardens, on wasteland and in huge amounts, on bits of scrubby land; May snow is starting to fall. The hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) blossom has been a little later than usual this year, probably due to a couple of weeks of cold weather in April and it may have been […]
When the first swallows arrived in Gravenhurst a few weeks ago I sent a text to Jane saying “swallows!”. At least that’s how I remember the gist of that particular communication. I was quite excited. Jane claimed later to think this was a good thing – the text. Oh and the swallows having arrived. A […]
We spend hours and hours carefully selecting hazel and tying bundles to make faggots for a river bank restoration job in Leighton Buzzard, and Greensand Trust Ranger, Matt, quite without any thought for how delicate these faggots might be, puts them in place by a none-too-delicate application of his size elevens. Fortunately, they fall into […]
Black Adder came to mind this afternoon whilst driving home from a job in Ware. More particularly, Lord Percy, played by the excellent Tim McInnerny, in Black Adder the Second (I’m prepared to be corrected on that), during a wonderful exchange in which he announces that he has “discovered pure green“. What prompted such pondering was the […]
It’s been raining a lot today. So we stayed inside all morning, toying with paper and the PC. Rainy days are useful sometimes. We get office stuff done in daylight and that should rescue me from evenings in front of a screen. There was a brief pause in the dampness around lunch time and I zoomed […]