Solace

After the accident last week (stitches were needed, an apology gift has been given), I headed to the copse - the south side where this oak is and sat among some shrub and saplings to breathe.

I was trying just to 'be'... feeling the tension in my hips ease and the breeze... but I ended up... thinking about the soil. I decided I'd run out here with a trowel and sample bags. The copse may have been planted and is very small and enclosed by agricultural fields, which are sprayed, but the hedge is, I think, very old. It has that veteran oak in it - not the one in the picture, though that's also in the hedge, but the one I submitted to the tree people.

You are meant to be able to gauge the age of a hedge by the number of species per some distance and some maths. I can't recall exactly, and besides, I can't recognise enough species. But I'd say that the banked hedges to the north and east of the copse must be over 300 years old. In that case, the soil would not have been ploughed - not by big machines, anyway and maybe never - and maybe there was a wood here that long ago.

Talking of soil, it turns out that someone who did The Kerulos Learning Institute's Animal Internship before me is an earthworm specialist... let's see if I can find her....nope. Never mind.

I also decided that if I get another dog, I will call her Nymet, which is an ancient word (Celtic) for sacred woodland - and as it happens where I was brought up, in Devon, is right in the centre of the nymet territory. My old haunts were places of the Green Man and the oak tree loving pagans.

On the way out of the copse, I saw a lot of acorns... but none had been nibbled.