Life must be filled up

Now is the time for deforestation. Seedlings, particularly ash tree seedlings, are absolutely everywhere and I can't go outside even to hang out the washing without spotting another cluster. Caught small, grasped firmly low down the stem and tugged, they come up. Left alone, they become impossible to cope with. I can spot an ash, beech, birch or oak seedling at several paces. Just the other day I noticed the red baby leaf of an oak in one of my troughs and pulled it out with the acorn still attached. I find this magical: to pull out a baby chestnut tree with the conker it's sprouting from and see how it all works.

If this garden were not a managed environment (coo-er), it would soon be a wilderness of ash and brambles. This would please some ecologists no end as they love only Nature. They tell us to 'encourage wildlife into our gardens'. It needs no encouragement. The place is teeming with wildlife, with no deliberate effort on my part at all. Today, putting some kitchen waste on the compost heap, I found a neatly rounded hollow in the previous layer (the weekend's grass clippings), where some creature, probably a fox, had spent a cosy night.