Trees for life ...

20 April

What a wonderful group of readers follow me in my ramblings in this blog. Just lately I have been so tired and washed out that I really haven’t up to doing much at all; yesterday was such a day. Why am I so tired day after day? Perhaps it’s a B12 deficiency. On Saturday I had a letter from my GP saying that he wants me to have a retest done on my B12 level. So this morning I had a look on-line and tiredness and depression are two of the signs for it. I shall be off to the Hussy after the 1 o’clock news. I’ll also call in and get my hair cut while I’m out.

Again this morning I sat and thought about how my health is in general these days. You see, in 1999 I had a fall in a shower in a B&B in Southend, Essex. It seems that a lot of my health issues have come from that fall. The injury I had when I fell was a crushed disc in my back which needed an operation to correct it. Right now it feels as though it do all that good a job really. My back aches pretty much constantly while my hips tend to take it turns as to which will kick up from day to day. Yesterday it was my right hip. It seems to be behaving itself at the moment though.

One of my favourite TV shows was on last night, CountryFile. In this show they were concentrating on forests/woods and trees, and what can wood/timber can be used for. Years ago Jan and I started birdwatching and one of our first birding trips was a local trip to Coombe Abbey, in Coventry. There are extensive woods all over the estate there and as we walked around, I looked at the amount of fallen trees that had been left to rot. Turing to Jan I suggested that instead of letting go rotten on the ground, why not turn it into charcoal or something. Of course I didn’t realise at that time that the decaying wood was home to a lot insects and other wild life; I know a lot better now.

There is a large number of trees that are dying because of various deceases that have made their way into the UK. One such decease in hitting the spruce trees, that’s a new one on me. Ash die back, and Dutch Elm decease are two I know of, but even so, there are a lot of others that I don’t know about. Humanity has reduced the amount of forests here in the UK by a huge amount. What is left is now under threat; it seems that if decease doesn’t get them, developers wanting to build new housing estates will. And yet, we should all be grateful for our trees. Not only do the lock carbon in their wood and release oxygen, they are home to hundreds of types of wildlife, great and small.

Wildlife comes in hundreds of shapes and colours and type. So for today’s photo is … 

Katkins on the elm tree outside our back door.

One more the Sage comes to our aid with …

 God visited a woman and told her she must give up smoking, drinking and sex if she wants to get into heaven. The woman said she would try her best.
God visited the woman a week later to see how she was getting on.
"Not bad" said the woman, "I've given up smoking and drinking but then I bent over to get some stuff out of the freezer and my boyfriend caught sight of my long slender legs, he pulled up my skirt, pulled my knickers to one side and made love to me right then and there."
"They don't like that in heaven." said God.
The woman replied: "They're not too happy about it in Costco either!"