Oaks & ashes

The landscape around my village is studded with oak trees. They lined the old road past Netherclay and towards Stoke St Mary, but once you start looking, they are everywhere. Like many oaks, they stand alone and so their intricate structure is silhouetted against the sky in the winter. Their trunks and branches and canopies so unbelievably like arteries and veins and capillaries. Or lungs. I always see oak trees as lungs. 

As I walk this evening, the intricacy of the outline is smudged and blurred. Each one of the tips of the limbs is covered in bursting buds. Bronze green unfurling leaves. In no time at all, each tree will be a frothy bubble; the intricacies hidden beneath a skin of sun-loving leaves.

Seeing the oaks starting to unfurl means I go and find an ash. Our ones (fingers crossed) seem to have escaped ash dieback. There was a moment last spring where I thought they had gone, and that the patches of grey in the woods would never turn green, that those beautiful trees had succumbed. But the jet black buds put out the scrappy bronze froth and all was well. This year, the trees are still strong but well behind the oaks in putting out their leaves into the cool April air. And you know where this is going don’t you?

Oak before the ash, then we'll have a splash. Ash before the oak, then we'll have a soak.

It is going to be an absolutely glorious summer.