…. reply to a foraging post
……….
a dismal drizzle lunchtime, still rain like this, then a couple of days sunshine and mushies will be springing up just everywhere!
…. as for Sweet Chestnuts, how about trying Petworth?
slightly beyond our usual stomping ground, but a lovely place
Theres a big grove of truly ancient sweet chestnuts up on the hill,
an ‘old chestnut’, but imagine gathering chestnuts from a tree that was full grown, when the Prince Regent, in his breeches was sprightly about brighton!
them be huge trees, a falstaffian girth, proper gnarly. full of brooding spook faces
obviously not quite the spirit vibe of oaks (ancient oaks are called dodderers!) but fantastic none the less
The sweet chestnut is not actually a british native but was bought over by the Romans, who were rather partial to chestnut paste.
togas and peanut butter and jam sarnies?
… forgot to say my 2 fave tree books are
Jacqueline Memory Paterson – Tree Wisdom: The definitive guidebook to the myth, folklore and healing power of Trees,
a curious tome by a druid, she ought to look like the piccie above
book is full of stories like Odin hanging upside down in the branches of yggdrassil, the world tree for 3 nights, in order to obtain knowledge… and why that tree was an ash
also
Meetings with Remarkable trees – Thomas Pakenham, lots of glossy piccies (tree porn?), he’s a pleasantly fusty raconteur
… and
the word deodrant? is that from the aroma of the bark of the deodar tree?
the other day i took the kids up to Nymans, we found a giant Sequoia, obviously but a titch of a thing compared to the ones in colorado,
but still took five of us, finger tip to finger tip, to encircle it.
face pushed right against it’s soft, warm red spongey bark
It rubs off on you like rust!
instant (pot noodle!) nostalgia
in the evening reading S a story, the evocative pong of the tree still on our jumpers.