Tag: oaks

We Went For A Walk

On By Mick CanningIn kent, poetry, Spring, UK, walking17 Comments

At last, the weather has got milder and it wasn’t raining so we thought ‘let’s go!’ Nothing outrageous, just seven or eight miles around Kent, in no hurry, looking for signs of Spring. So, have a browse through a few visual notes with me…

It looks very cloudy, but the clouds were thin and we got quite a lot of sunshine.

With birdsong thrown in for free! For some reason, WordPress won’t let me load this video directly, but is happy to load it from Twitter. *shrugs*

The celandines are out.

And a few early primroses.

We passed a magnificent oak

And some rather nice fungi on the end of this log

And, a poem. You may have read this before, as I’ve posted it before, but I’ve put up again because I rather think it just encapsulates how I feel when I go out walking.

If I could just wave a wand,

I would wander the world.

With my notebook in hand,

And a bag on my back.

.

I would sleep under hedges,

In hotels and haylofts.

Drink beers under trees,

And eat cheese on the moor.

.

I’d watch clouds over hilltops,

And boats on the ocean.

Shapes and shadows at sunset,

A moon with a view.

,

And I’d write trivial poems

Of snowfall and sunlight,

Birds singing at dawn

And the sounds of a stream.

,

There’s the lure of a skyline,

And skylarks above me,

Wine and woodsmoke my welcome,

At the end of the day.

,

To travel, to journey,

There’s magic in wandering

Over moorland and downland,

Through woods and through fields.

,

The world’s full of wonders

All waiting for wanderers.

Let me follow these paths

For as long as I can.

Peak Autumn

On By Mick CanningIn autumn, oaks, trees23 Comments

The leaves are turning, but in some cases, such as these oaks, still very slowly.

On Sunday, I was wandering around under the oak trees in the woods for a while. It was a gloriously sunny morning and I found myself stuffing my pockets with acorns and oak leaves. For no particular reason – they just looked interesting.

Maybe I was channelling my inner squirrel. Back indoors, I thought I might try to arrange them a little bit artistically, but I’m not sure it has really worked. Never mind. I love the way that both the leaves and the acorns turn from green to brown, passing through many different pastel colours on the way, many of them ochres – the earth colours.

‘From tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow’ as the saying goes. This one has a little way to go yet, but as long as it doesn’t get broken or knocked down, its chances are good. There is a lot of light where it is growing, and currently little competition for light or space.

I felt a little menaced by a fallen branch, but all was well.

And despite it being mid-October, as I said at the beginning, there are still plenty of summery green leaves to be found.

Tree Lurve

On By Mick CanningIn environment, trees, Weald16 Comments

About two miles away from our house I came across these two oak trees. The smaller one looks as though it is embracing the larger one.

I wanted to know their stories. Had the smaller one grown from an acorn produced by the larger one? Or from a different tree? Most oaks in Britain grow from acorns that have been gathered and buried by squirrels or jays, and they’d probably not bury them right at the foot of the tree, or would they? Could it be a secondary growth thrown up from a root of the larger tree? And the smaller one has developed in an unusual way – long and straggly as though it aspires to be ivy, or some such climbing plant. Very difficult to assess its age for that reason, although I would guess the larger one to be between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years old. Both are still alive, although it was difficult to spot leaves on the smaller one, as they are mostly high up.

My immediate instinct, or at least idle musing, was to begin to impose various anthropocentric motives to the situation: The larger tree was supporting the smaller for some reason – perhaps it was weak, or diseased. The smaller one was supplying the larger with nutrition of some sort. They were living in a symbiotic relationship and sharing resources…all nonsense, of course. They had grown that way purely by chance.

Surely?