2018-08-02 11:29
There is no more depressing sight to a tree officer than a line of dead young trees. Actually there is something more depressing than that: a bundle of ‘evidence’ from an insuran… Read More
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Diary Of A Failing Nature Writer Blog
naturewriterfail.wordpress.com
It's easy to write a nature diary as a countryside-wandering dilletante. It's more difficult when you work in a city, and for a local authority, and the brutal everyday keeps getting in your way.
2018-07-19 15:21
A recent trip to a part of the UK where trees grow poorly or not at all – Cursed! Cursed soil! – led me to thinking about nature as an experience, and how it plays a part in mode… Read More
2018-07-05 14:10
I have had a few weeks of stress and tiredness. As a result the working day has been completed on autopilot. Tree, not falling over = fine. Next tree – annoying somebody => prune. A… Read More
2018-05-04 13:40
Of late the seasons have been stoking my trust issues. As someone who works outside I know that climatically the south east of England is not very rainy, even in winter (check it out compare… Read More
2018-01-23 10:44
Trees in cities incite strong feelings both for and against them. They offer endless inconvenience as well as ageless beauty, and a tree officer becomes the arbiter in disputes. As a public… Read More
2018-01-11 16:57
The first trees that provided sustained comfort to me were Leyland cypresses. To those who work with trees or have ever had one in their garden this will seem a perverse choice. But the prob… Read More
2017-10-31 08:21
Trees hold, at least in theory, an important place in British culture. They are much romanticised in word and art, mostly as part of the countryside: our ancient woodlands and wood… Read More
2017-09-11 17:48
It’s easy to be gloomy about the future of trees. Disease upon disease upon pest seem to descend upon us. It’s hard to think of a major tree species in the UK not affected by som… Read More
2017-08-21 14:46
There was a light smattering of rain as I cycled into work today. Sometimes this would ruin my mood, but today I quite liked it. Perhaps it was because the sheen of water on the road wasn&rs&hell…Read More
2017-08-15 14:35
I have spent much of the day looking at cemetery trees. In accessible graveyards trees have a kind of double meaning: they act as living memorials but also provide a green landscape through… Read More
2017-07-27 12:48
Today I had to go and look at one of the most attractive trees in the borough, a very impressive Paulownia. It has dropped two branches in recent weeks and a local resident has got very nerv… Read More
2017-06-26 15:27
I’ve had no time to blog for a couple of weeks. I see nobody on Twitter has noticed. Social media does not love you, it only notices you when you perform. I guess I’ll have to ge… Read More
2017-06-05 14:52
Another day, another few lime trees lost. They were pollards, and too small to be defendable, though they had been there a long time. There are no records of how long ago they were planted… Read More
2017-05-31 15:45
A muggy day in London. I wandered slowly down to a narrow street half a mile from the Town Hall. A resident had been complaining repeatedly about the ‘weeds’ at the bottom of the… Read More
2017-05-24 11:50
Another summer’s day in late spring, and I took the opportunity to wander some of the nicer streets of the borough. Our own reduced plane trees are now balls of green, and the sun is h… Read More
2017-05-23 11:51
I was in a truly foul mood yesterday after a meeting with UKnet Rail. As a publicly owned company they seem to have managed to combine the worst of the public sector with the most grasp… Read More
2017-05-19 10:57
This mowning I had a taste of what it can be like to be one of our residents. Walking across a nearby park managed by another authority I noticed an absence. The absence had a strange i… Read More
2017-05-16 15:23
At last, a warm day. I lay outside under a tree at lunchtime, in a small triangle of greenery we manage, beneath a scarlet oak I decided to fell a few months ago due to the ganoderma fu… Read More
2017-05-15 10:56
I wanted to come back from my trip to the Marshy Mountains invigorated and refreshed. I did have a good weekend. Unfortunately now I’m back in London I’m not feeling so good… Read More
2017-05-11 15:06
What I wanted to spend the day thinking about was what we lose with spring. As I cycled to work I was meditating on what gets hidden as the trees put on their shrouds. The structure of a tre… Read More
2017-05-09 15:14
Over the years a lot of crimes have been committed under the mantra of ‘Right tree, right place’. You can see the good intentions of the idea – let’s try not to plant… Read More
2017-05-08 09:06
It has been a weekend of fine weather and I have been walking in different places around Devon. It is good to be out of the city for a few days, good to be surrounded by flowers and birdsong… Read More
2017-05-05 09:17
In an unusual move for me and my body, I slept through last night with no interruptions, and consequently woke with a feeling of warm positivity about the world. The sun added to it as I set… Read More
2017-05-04 10:07
It has been a gloriously sunny spring day. On some such days this job is a joy. I drive from a tree in a garden, to a cherry blossom avenue, to a woodland section of park, and revel in natur… Read More
2017-05-02 09:59
I cycled to work this morning and it was spring. Flowers adorn the cherries and apples, leaves are bursting from all but the late developers. The sky, in what seemed like a serious statement… Read More
2017-05-01 13:37
A diary about trees, a diary of nature writing, should be written in a tranquil location, perhaps a cottage in the countryside. The writer needs to reach a meditative state of mind in which… Read More
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