The Churchend Oak

I did imagine we might try for some domestic fireworks; there was talk of a mass launch. But no, I've never known a 5th November to be so quiet. Perhaps they're keeping them for December, or perhaps (and one can only hope) they're all piled beneath Westminster awaiting a tiny spark of revolution...

Anyway, Janet totalled herself digging in the garden like she had the energy of a ten year old, and I took myself around the village. This is the beautiful and still thriving old Oak at Churchend, totally hollow and the shelter for many a sheep on a rainy day. It's a lovely tree, and it should be listed on the ancient tree inventory but isn't.

The Parish Council is considering a parish wide survey of our trees, in the knowledge they can be lost to casual farm management, to developments with canny tree surveys of their own, and under the new almost free for all permitted development plans by just about anyone. Yes, we can establish TPO's once a tree is identified as at risk, but things move faster nowadays.

Not everything moves fast of course. watching the news over the pond it's looking everso slightly optimistic, but there is so much that can change in an instant. And inevitably there will be legal challenge on top of legal challenge before this is done and dusted. Fingers remain crossed.

Thanks, by the way, for your tolerance with my rant yesterday. It's easy to say, in a world of chaos, let the small stuff go. But that's how they win. And the blog post has possibly got more love than anything else I've written this year! I may be mad, but I am clearly not alone. 

And now, back to ministering to the achey wife. ;-)