Trees please...
(Or, ashes to ashes?...)

If you go down to the woods today, dear readers, (as the popular song reminds us) you’re sure of a big surprise…


For, rather than cuddly teddy bears or ruggedly autumnal picnics, you’ll probably find an unpleasant case of Chalara fraxinea – ughhh



Do you share my woodland worries and ash-anxieties, dear readers? The news is certainly troubling about the state of our beloved ash tree population – apparently 90 % of Denmark’s ashes have this dreadful disease , and now it’s spreading here…

Ash trees are one of our unsung heroes in the countryside, not showy, not spectacular, just grand… As dear old Rudyard reminded us “Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn”…and now they might be gorn (He didn’t actually write the last bit, obviously, as Mr. Kipling did make exceedingly good poems…)

So, is there any good news to be had?...Well, a little: Bexley are involved in the Trees to Treasure scheme, which will benefit local communities…

And Bexley Libraries (naturally) has some splendid tree-themed reading available at many (ahem) branches…root them out and leaf through them. (Try Wildwood by Roger Deakin – a very fine book).

So, there we have it, dear readers – now, how to conclude?...Perhaps, in this November week of Remembrance we should recall the words of the poet Alfred J Kilmer (who died in the Great War in 1918):

“I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree”…

“Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree”.

TTFN.