TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX FOR OCTOBER 2015

Trees are changing - and grass is fading where it is short and dry.

But what would our urban landscape be like without them? Sometimes their shapes are absorbed by the buildings round them. Sometimes they create the skyline.

Are you

Following a Tree?

How are your trees doing? (The ones in your garden, in parks, in streets. The ones you specially look at when you walk by.)

Are you following a particular tree?

If so - add a link to your post about it in the box below.

If not - why not start?

You can become a Loose and Leafy Tree Follower at any time in the year.

Do join us. Info. is here.

And before the box - here's some other info.
Loose and Leafy is about to be mothballed.
Broadly - my laptop hasn't been mended despite being sent away three times. The on/off button on my camera is starting to be depressed. It would be absurd to buy a new laptop for the sake of a blog - and the camera really takes priority.
It's not that the laptop doesn't work - after all, here I am typing away. It's just slow. I'm wasting too much time waiting for pages to load. And my meagre store of patience could be put to better use than staring at stuck screens until they un-freeze.

So . . . Loose and Leafy is being mothballed. BUT Treefollowing, Street Plant Posts and Stuckfooting will all continue.

Pat at The Squirrelbasket is likely to become the Tree Following co-ordinator. Everything Tree Following will transfer to her as long as we can work out how to put a link box on a WordPress blog. (Can anyone advise?)

Street Plant Blogging will transfer to Hollis at Urban Plants, Urban Rocks. (She'll have a link box ready for you on 21st October.)

Stuck Foots? To be announced. (When I know!)

But don't worry. Loose and Leafy won't be shutting down in a blink of an eye. I'll make sure it's all set up so you can easily find your way to these other blogs. There's a little more to come on here too - a book review and a final look round.

I don't know when / if Loose and Leafy will burst upon your screens again after that - but if you would like to be certain not to miss it . . . and to save you coming and going to check . . . I suggest you sign up for it to be sent to you by email. There's a box to put your address in right at the top of the sidebar. That way you will be one of the first to know when it re-activates.

In the meantime, a slow computer won't break all connections. I may or may not be able to keep up to date with

Message in a Milk Bottle 

 (no words, only one picture at a time, more straightforward!)

I'm on Twitter @LucyCorrander

and you can email me at looseandleafy@googlemail.com

Do support Pat and Hollis and . . . to be announced (!) when they take up the Tree Following and Street Plants and Stuck-footing batons . . . And don't forget there will be at least two extra posts here before I unpack the mothballs.

And at last what you are really waiting for - this month's Tree Following Link Box!

(As usual it will be staying open until the 24th of the month.)

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TREE FOLLOWING - JULY 2015

Summit of Cothelston Hill, Somerset.

In May, in a post about The Old Drove Road and Dead Woman's Ditch, I mentioned a dispute over the trees on Cothelston Hill in Somerset. Their roots were disturbing a rabbit warren at a site where there are also Bronze Age remains.. Which should go? Trees or warren? A local and prominent landmark? Or a historic but not immediately visible hang out for rabbits? (Food in the old days!)

The solution? Sensible. The trees (planted only forty years ago) will be felled and new ones planted nearby. (Somerset County Gazette.) Ancient Monument and Modern Landmark preserved. Both.

I hope none of the trees you are following have been destroyed since last you wrote whether by archaeologists or recent lightening! We'll find out.

(P.S. Thanks to Rowan who points out that despite what it says in the article, it can't be a Bronze Age rabbit warren because there weren't any rabbits here then.) 

Incidentally, I took this picture on Saturday (4th July 2015) and I'm writing this on the 6th; and I've just found an article in The Western Morning News  . . . about walking up Cothelston Hill.  It doesn't give the year but perhaps Martin Hesp was up there taking pictures from roughly the same places at roughly the same time as me. Bang goes another post!

I'm Following a Tree
Are You?
Do join us!
More information on the
Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

One thing I know for certain (I think!); he won't have been writing about your trees. At least (says she, covering herself) not all of them. Not all on the same day!

So let's hear it from the Tree Followers.

The box will be open from 7th - 14th July.

Click here for links to Tree Following posts for July 2015.

(Link Boxes kindly supplied by Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.)

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TREE FOLLOWING - LINK BOX FOR JUNE 2015

The good thing about old and tatty horse chestnut candles is that they'll result in conkers later in the year; and seriously - is there much in nature more satisfying than a shiny conker?

When I was little, as well as having conker fights (I could never make head or tail of the rules but I liked the challenge of skewering them without sticking a screwdriver through my hand and swinging them round on strings) I'd cut them in half to make little cups for my dolls. I hated dolls but they provided an excuse for hacking away and getting my fingers stained. (The word 'half' there is used loosely. 'Chipped into bits' is a closer description.

Conkers are a long way off yet.

But perhaps many of us are feeling the same about our trees. Oak flowers will turn to acorns. (Hang on; what do oak flowers look like?) And those following fruit trees will be looking beyond those petals which have been flung all over the place by the wind - and planning what to do with all those apples and medlar and quinces. (Perhaps with fingers crossed!)

So I'm expecting that now, after a few months of not enough happening, a whole season is likely to have gone over in a month. We'll see!

Click here for the list of Tree Following Posts for June 2015

The link boxes on Loose and Leafy are kindly supplied by

Mr Linky's Magical Gadgets

TREE FOLLOWING - April

If you see this message, it will be because my laptop is not yet back from the menders. It won't be an exciting page because loading pictures while it's not working properly is a bit of a palaver. How I look forward to its return! when (hopefully) I'll not have to press the mouse pad in different places over and over in the hope that eventually one of the taps will make it work. . . . Oh! all that catching up - with just about everything!

But as long as the box comes up at the right time, you don't really need me. So here I am putting the box on a timer and waving my laptop into the blue for a while.

Tree Following Link Boxes are supplied by Mister Linky's Magical Widgets. The links are moved to a separate page once the box is closed.
Here are the links to

Tree Following Posts for April

TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX FOR MARCH

It's an entrancing time of year for trees. Where I live few buds have opened. (There's one hawthorn which unfailingly starts ahead of the others and its branches are already spattered with tiny leaves.)

But skies are often blue now instead of grey and the sunlight shining between the mostly bare branches is tinted with streaks of gold instead of the uniform silver we've been used to since the end of autumn. It's cold though. Indeed, it seems colder than it has been for ages.

Birds are singing - and magpies doing voice impersonations of woodpeckers which is confusing and a little disappointing!

And here we are with the March link box for Tree Following posts. Keep going folks! Your tree may not be 'doing' much yet. It depends a lot on where you are. Some Tree Followers are taking the moment to find out the history of their tree, or how it grows, personal associations or the birds and animals which use it. It's fascinating. And there may well be interesting things going on at the base of your tree's trunk.

I came across this thin branch which had fallen into a woodland stream.

You may like to enlarge this to see the Jelly Ear in more detail.
When I put the picture on iSpot people mentioned the white that looks like paint
is a fungus too. (Though what?)
The photo was taken on March 3rd 2015
in the gloom of a woodland stream with no golden sunlight.

The brown fungi growing along it are Jelly Ear / Jew's Ear / Judas' Ear / Auricularia auricula-judae. If you'd like to know more about this fungus and its odd name, I wrote a post about it in April 2013. That was growing on an elderberry tree but it grows on other trees too. (Or you could go to the fount of all wisdom (!) Wikipedia.)

Click Here for Posts in the March Link Box
With thanks to Mister Linky's Magical Gadgets which provides the boxes.

TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX FOR FEBRUARY 2015

And again!

New Tree Followers. Welcome!

New Trees!

Please do see the Tree Following Page to check that you, your blog, your location and your tree are there correctly.

Some updated their trees in January. Are your new details up to date? Me? I'm wildly inefficient so if there's something absent and wrong I hope you'll forgive me - and let me know what's to be added, deleted or in other ways put right.

About the Trees in the Arts Page: it's not forgotten. Simply submerged. I know I haven't even emailed everyone who sent suggestions and links. Another grovel. Another please forgive me. All in all we seem to rattle along quite nicely and everything (with a bit of prodding) gets done in the end. (?)

February!

I don't know. Everything seems deader than it did in January. Maybe it's something to do with the skies. Where I live it's a month to appreciate silhouettes. I've also been noticing trees which poke over other people's garden walls. For following they are out of bounds For photographing - hopefully not!

List of links to Tree Following Posts for February 2015

With thanks to 'Mr Linky's Magical Gadgets' which supplies the Link Boxes.

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TREE FOLLOWING - LINK BOX FOR JANUARY 2015

Please feel free to copy this
Tree Following emblem
for your own blog.

 Hello Tree Followers - and a very Happy New Year!

For how long a year is - click here..

Some of us are keeping our trees for twelve months.
Some are choosing a new one for the new year.
If you have changed your tree, please let me know so I can adjust the list on the Tree Following Page.

If you are a new Tree Follower, please check your details are correct (also on the Tree Following Page).

Link Box Below.

The Guardian Newspaper on-line is, this week, inviting readers to contribute photos of trees
for its 'Guardian Witness' project.

Tree Following Link Boxes open at 7am on the 7th of the Month and close at 7pm on the 14th. (UK time.)

Click For the January Tree Following Links

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