In a nutshell... it's an Oak tree

Mark Moffett/Minden Pictures

When I was a kid, growing up on a dairy farm in rural Sussex, I spent many hours around Oak trees; climbing them, slumped against them eating lunch, or face pressed against the bark counting to 100…. “coming ready or not” ….and then I’d curse my wellies and the stupid tree as I raced off to find my siblings slipping around on a sea of acorns beneath them like some comedy cat moment in Tom and Jerry.
I spent so long with these trees I can still remember a few of my favourites… the feel of the coarse bark on our legs as we climbed, and the even coarser lichen as it dropped into your wellies and spent the rest of the day itching its’ way into your socks. A tree-climbing slip invariably ended with a few more scratches, lichen under the finger nails and weird green powdery lines down your hands and knees.
But in the quieter times (after a sibling fallout or when hiding instead of being “it”) I would collect up a pocketful of acorns and sit lobbing them out into the field seeing how far I could throw them and hoping the squirrels wouldn’t find them so far away from the parent tree.
I used to think the cows and all their ground churning were responsible for burying the acorns and that squirrels simply dug about all day hoping to accidentally dig one up.
Something so small, with the potential to be something so huge – my head just couldn’t work it out back then and marvelled at it often – imagining a miniature Oak tree inside each shiny golden acorn – some of which were big enough to fill my fist at the time.
The acorn could either be eaten (by a Jay, a squirrel or whatever it is that makes those tiny holes in the side and eats it from the inside out), or it could by some miracle become an enormous tree; a home to the squirrel, the jay and a million of those tiny hole-makers.
Who decides which it is? The cunning squirrel and his ability to remember where he buried them? The cow and her ability to trample them into the ground at the fringes of the field? or the Jay and his inability to keep them in his beak as he flies off with them? Well this week it's me that decided as I removed from the fridge a collection of acorns I collected from Rais last Autumn and stuffed them in a sandwich bag full of compost. I hope to grow them on and plant them back at the wood in a few years time when they are strong enough to fend off the nibbling rabbits and deer. Those I planted last autumn are already 6 months old and strong enough to go outside in my garden now - I'm interested to see whether those planted in the Spring will catch up over the summer, or whether they will always look 6 months younger.