Arboricide II

So there are heaps of chippings where we used to have trees. When the bus goes past, the top deck gets an unedited view of (what we laughingly call) our garden. To look on it is like looking on a surgical scar. It will never be healed, I think - but of course it can: we can plant new trees, just not the same ones. Not fast-growing non-native conifers, obviously. Nor chestnut, oak or beech - all of them challenged by climate or disease. Someone suggests larch, unarguably native - but when doesn't it look weedy, except in the first flush of spring? And given the proximity to houses, we can't have anything that grows very high.

I bottled out of felling the blue pine. It is such a splendid tree. If high winds in autumn cause an accident, I shall never forgive myself. Meanwhile, I'm persuaded that all that anxiety is Health and Safety gorn mad.