Trees

Date: Friday 4 September

 This is something we wrote for our community magazine. We liked it. We hope you do too.

Dreaming of trees

I really like trees. So, it seems, does this small planet. I’m not an ecologist or any kind of expert when it comes to understanding our environment – like most of us. What I do know is that, along with all of us, I need to start appreciating the natural world rather than merely exploiting it. The last few months have helped me and many others to rediscover our surroundings – flowers, trees, squirrels, birds, deer and fields of barley. Life (for some of us) has been quieter and slower. And so I come back to trees. My favourite (at the moment) is the larch. It sheds orange needles in the autumn and produces beautiful red flowers and fresh light green needles each spring – the needles are even edible for a short time. Having tried some, I wouldn’t describe it as a delicacy.

 

Recently, some members of the Climate Café visited a site where some trees could be planted (probably not larch). It is too far from Blair to be a community woodland for us but the landowner is positive and has some experience of large scale planting of trees. We came away thinking that we could all learn a lot about creating a new woodland, working together with a sympathetic landowner. The Climate Café was given a generous donation for tree planting and we want to use it this year with native trees that will be used somewhere nearer the town. We have some possible places in mind but any ideas, information, tips or offers to get involved would be really appreciated.

In a way, for someone of my age, planting trees is an act of hope for the future. It will be at least five years before they start to make an impact on climate change but over the next fifty years they will help – and we will have the benefit of beautiful trees. Did someone say “no-brainer”?

Get in touch if you’d like to get involved.

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