Listening to the news of global warning regularly it is all too easy to reassure myself that if it happens it won’t affect me... at my age I am not going to be around to see any of the dire forecasts come true. But it is still worrying...
I do believe the figures trotted out all too often to support the idea that it’s already happening...and I hear the calls to plant more trees to contribute their oxygen to the air we breath. . So this I now admit makes me smile a lot!
When we moved into our present home around ten years ago we had a very large garden which had been a field containing cows. In it was a huge horse chestnut tree, an ancient palm and a lot of grass.
It still has a very long lawn but over the last years I have planted seventy two trees and shrubs. I counted them recently . I still have more to put in...so soon there will be more than that. My gardener does the digging of course so I can order more bushes easily.
It’s not often I feel this sense of achievement but if we need more oxygen I am doing my best to provide it in my small corner of the earth.
Visiting garden centres to find beautiful shrubs is a joy in old age, particularly as I don’t have to do the digging any more. So off I go to see what else I can put in, safe in the awareness that I am contributing more oxygen in my small corner of the earth .
It it’s their beauty which attracts me...the fact that I’m contributing good air to breath as well is just an extra bit of joy!
1 comment:
I suspect that if we had a bigger garden, we would plant more trees and bushes, but our small terrace can only support one Apple Tree and some bushes, which are hard to manage as they grow so vigorously.
But we want a smaller, not bigger house. Three bedrooms are a family size house, there is only us two, rattling around in it. Our Church is a green oasis in an Urban Village. Our local council cut down many street trees some years ago, which had been there since victorian times. Their excuse was that roots were disrupting pavements and branches were hitting buses passing by.
The real issue is that they didn't want the costs of maintenance and despite many of them being listed, they used their own planning powers to get rid of them. Now, they are encouraging us to plant in our gardens.
Our church has many trees that are listed and if we need to have them trimmed, we have to apply to the council for permission, and they are reluctant to give it, unless we can demonstrate that there is a danger to the public who walk in the Church grounds.
And of course Diocese has an word or two to say, as they are responsible for the trees in the Vicarage grounds, and have to pay for any work needed there. Recently, three trees came down in the storms and diocese tried to tell us they were our responsibility, but trotting out the Plans for the Vicarage garden clearly located the trees, with descriptions as clearly located in the Vicarage garden. So, they reluctantly paid.
It is an expensive business - over £400 to do the work. We have now piles of logs, which can be used for wood burners, but the vicarage has modern heating and no wood burners - so gradually, those with wood burners are having free logs for their use, with a small donation to church funds.
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