The benefits of the blog

I have been looking at my pictures in preparation for the new website launch (yes, I have been promising for ages; it’s late, it’s late).  As a freelancer myself, I’m always keen to promote people in a similar position. And Emerald, this site’s website designer has been inundated with work.  Freelancers of the world rise up and cheer for her good fortune.

So we have to be patient a bit more.

But in the meantime, I noticed that I have been taking pictures of one particular tree every year.  And curse the fact I cannot find the ones from when we first moved here.

This pine tree is growing directly out of a granite rock up on the top terrace, almost in the forest.  I vividly recall the very first autumn I was standing with my strimmer in my hands looking carefully at this odd sight.

I was strimming all the brambles that were trying to get a purchase on the rocks around this large boulder. And almost ran the blade over the little seedling.

Should I cut out this ‘weed’? I decided that it was in such a mad spot that it would die a natural death anyway.

So I left it. And boy it is thriving. I have no idea why. I seem to recall that pines are quite shallowly rooted; this one is rooted in rock.

Perhaps I ought to pledge to photograph its progress on Christmas Day every year.

And while I laboriously work through my old photo files I might find it when it was a titchy little seedling, no more than a foot tall and looking absurd in its rocky prison.