Carbon Footprint

During autumn we collect acorns and conkers to put in milk cartons and the odd take-out coffee cup.

We end up with bags and bags of them but only yield maybe a dozen shoots.  That number gets halved again depending on the weather, animals, accidents and memory.

    

Last year’s successes got washed out of it thanks to the many deluges of rain so currently there are about five milk cartons with baby trees being nursed and watched carefully with the intention of maybe planting them over the next couple of years.

We have one such tree, a horse chestnut that surely must be about ten years old by now, growing stronger and stronger each year in a large ceramic flower pot.

This one has survived a pesky neighbour’s cat deciding she liked to use it as her bed and would curl up around it when it was a seedling. 

A couple of years ago the top got chewed off by another pesky animal but still it kept growing. 

For me this tree is the first indication that spring and autumn have arrived as it is always the first to bud and turn golden.

We decided the June bank holiday Monday would be the day that finally, all of our trees would be put into their forever homes; the ground.

The lads have a bit of a TV addiction so it was also a ruse to get them out of the house and into the dirt.

We knew it wouldn’t be hard once we got them out there with the promise of a bit of digging, water and planting.

Off we went our wheelbarrow laden with pots of trees, shovels and two empty paint buckets for water.  Our dog Juno and the four boys.

Oldest Boy got stuck in almost immediately and started singing “every day I’m shovellin’” absolutely thrilled with himself and his wit.

He didn’t believe us when we told him this tree is older than he is.

Holes had to be dug, prepped and then the trees dropped in.

Then the first one went in!

Naturally such hard toil is thirst making.

 

And you never know what you might find in the grass if you decide to sit down and take a break.

 


It would go against union rules if a lunch break wasn't allowed.

Also the trouble with leaving plants in pots around the house is you tend to forget what you have.kinda forgot about this:  a hazelnut plant.  Last autumn it produced one fine specimen called a nut.  Here's hoping its time in the ground will produce more.                                                               

 

And then at the end of it all, a little walk around the garden produced this discovery.  Pears!

We spent the afternoon putting our trees in the ground but hopefully we planted some lovely memories too.