Woodlands & weather (Saturday 25th October)

This week has been dominated by woodlands & weather.

On a gloriously autumnal Wednesday I sat on one of my favourite trees, an alder with a curved branch that slightly overhangs a strongly flowing brook, and listened to the water move & watched leaves falling. I sat there and thought about the flowing water, things fall in it and get carried along for a way, then their journey stops, but the water flows on. It flows on, over things, under them, round and through things, fast & slow, smooth, turbulent. Water flows on as a wide mass, a narrow trickle, as creeping beads, then a stationary, independent droplet that vanishes. Similar in many respects to emotions, thoughts & ideas. Sometimes ideas feel sparklingly clear then become sullied by eddies or intrusions, from this they can recover, drop the load, and return to a singing perfection or of course, become turgid & slow with the weight of additional material. I doubt these are original thoughts to the world, but they are new to me & I have enjoyed them & feel they may be useful.

On the same walk with the large dog, I stopped to look into the sky, it was overcast but bright & breezy. For most of the walk I had been hearing the shriek of buzzards & the deep throated call of ravens & wanted to see if I could spot them. I stopped by a small stand of trees & a few moments later was treated to a buzzard swooping by only a few dozen metres away - I could clearly see it creamy underside. A few minutes later I saw a bird wheeling high in the sky, just hanging there without wing flapping. It is a familiar sight around here but for me, it's familiarity does not diminish it's beauty & impact. There it is suspended in nothingness, but that cannot be, so here is a bird demonstrating to the land-bound, the presence of an invisible force as potent as the invisible & incompletely understood charge that runs through our power lines. A power we simply call wind that can make us smile at a bobbing kite, cause wonder at a plane & swan taking-off, & rant & rail when it knocks out a phone line!

My Significant Other & I went off to look at a woodland- part of our on-going search to buy a piece of land. The estate agent's blurb included enticing words such as "wonderful avenue", "beautiful cover of bluebells" - hard to resist a look on a beautiful sunny day. Almost predictably is was a disappointment - an oak plantation with no undergrowth on a steep hill side with several dwellings close by! So the search goes on & I try to sustain my flagging optimism by reading books such as the ones below:
I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the following book on the mobile library van “Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees” by Roger Deakin . Woodlands.co (a site that sells woodlands) have a really interesting blog site full of useful woodland-related articles including a review of this book: http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/. On their site I've also spotted this one- Badgers, Beeches and Blisters - Getting started in your own wood . It was written by Professor Julian Evans and sponsored by Woodlands.co.uk. & is available as a free download.

If it does not prove possible to buy a small reasonable woodland at a small reasonable price then I guess we'll have to "grow our own"! To this end, last year I started gathering seeds & seedlings of native & a few ornamental trees. A healthy number have survived & thrived. This year I have started gathering earlier & have high hopes of a thicket at the least, from my acorns, beech nuts, crab apples and sweet & horse chestnuts: mice & squirrels keep out!