A tree blocking my route. Actually, I could walk around it.
I think it was an ash. There's this disease - ash dieback, caused by a naughty fungus from Asia which evolved with the Asian ash trees (they can handle it but the European ash trees can't) - which I think had weakened this tree. All the green you see is ivy. A few days later I went back and they (someone) had chainsawed the tree and you could see that half as much wood in the trunk was ivy not tree. Maybe I shouldn't blame the fungi and just the ivy.
However, there is plenty of evidence of ash dieback round here. In the woods where I was volunteering the other day, there was what they called 'the Power Tree'. It was eight trunks growing from the one root system after the tree had been coppiced some 70 years ago. You sit in a bowl in the middle and look up up between the eight trunks encircling you. But now you see a lot of sky as the Power Tree has ash dieback.
Ash trees were I believe very special to pre-Christians in England. Ah! The World Tree. The Tree of Life. Ash heals the loneliness of the human spirit. No wonder they're all dying. Or rather, no wonder the human spirit is so tremendously sad.
This makes me think of my tree paintings. Funnily enough, I started another today. With the new pencils.
I had heard of the ash dieback in the UK but hadn't read anything about it lately. Very sad. Your post makes the situation personal as you sit in the "Power Tree". Thanks for the links. The World Tree symbol/ myth/ spirituality is powerful and its startling for me to discover the connection between the ash and its current fate and demise.
So pleased you are working on tree paintings.