Trees

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am a politics geek, and a bit of a news junkie, but suddenly, as if someone has thrown a switch, I lose all interest in why Rebekah Brooks has suddenly resigned, what Elizabeth Murdoch really said about her (rumours are of some kind of swearing), what this means for James Murdoch, and whether Andy Coulson went to stay at Chequers or not.

It is a big story, and it’s a fascinating one, but on the fifth day it starts to feel like the media is eating its own tail. Every single journalistic tweet on Twitter now starts: BREAKING, or EXCLUSIVE. Perhaps too it is the effect of hyperbole. When Rupert Murdoch pulled his bid for BSkyB, George Monbiot wrote: This is our Berlin Wall moment. Which I think is quite rude to the people of East Berlin, who really knew oppression when they saw it.

I decide to plant trees instead, as an antidote. I find the most ravishing little copper beech, and another cotinus, because it seems now I am mad on cotinus. I love those flashes of deep claret against all the green.

Around me, the weather closes in, dark and ominous. The birds have all gone silent, as if holding their breath. A hard wind blows up out of the west. I start to mourn the lack of summer, but then I think: those black clouds will bring rain, to water in the new trees. And they will grow into mighty, majestic things, watching over the unchanging Scottish landscape long after this scandal is forgotten.

 

The lovely new beech:

And there was some more rather naughty new planting too. Of delphinums:

And nepeta:

And salvia, because it seems that I cannot get enough salvia:

And a little astilbe:

Look at the unwavering gaze of the Pigeon:

And the timeless serenity of the hill:

And now I am going to make some chicken soup.