Fire / Wood

I did not enjoy Bonfire Night last night; I felt as if I were under fire. Perhaps it would be different if we'd actually been out watching the fireworks, but from here the main feauture was volume. In previous years, there's been a lot of banging interspersed with flashes of light, but this year the banging was louder, and the visible effects more infrequent. They didn't seem to be connected, either: at one point I was here in the attic, with loud explosions going off apparently on the front doorstep, and distress signals - red and green flares - popping quietly in the skylight above my desk.

Not happy: so instead, some soothing thoughts about trees. Richard Mabey writes a review in The Guardian in which his disagreement with the book under review takes the form of this irresistible enlargement on its subject:

More seriously, the uniqueness of oak as a cultural root and branch is overstated. In Kyrgyzstan, there are ancient semi-nomadic communities based around walnut and wild apple trees. Sweet chestnut - as a source of nut-flour, building timber and fuel-wood - framed a whole civilisation in the Italian Appenines. The early Turks built very serviceable ships from pine, elm and mulberry. Even in oak-proud southern England, it was beech, not oak, that provided most of the fuel for London and for the iron- and glassworks of the Weald.

And where ursulav lives, The leaves are starting to turn:

They're still green, most of 'em. But around the edges, the other colors are starting to sneak in, a quick pass with the airbrush when nobody's looking, a little deep burgundy around the apples, hints of yellow and pink among the maples. Every now and then, somebody's planted a foreign specimen tree, specifically for the color, which stands out pumpkin orange, like a bad dye job. The other trees have mostly drawn back, embarassed, from these outsiders. You get the feeling that they're glad there's a little mulch moat, a circle of lawn or sidewalk separating them. The trees feel in their cambium that that ain't right.

ETA: And, from tumulus, more trees!

Thank you. Feeling better now...