For a break and to celebrate the lifting of restrictions to travel beyond 5 km and across the county, myself and Annie took ourselves off to Fota and some connection with grand old trees. There is a Monterey Cypress with a girth the size of an adult human, growing here since 1845 – a date etched in most Irish minds as the time of the famine. Annie led me around an enormous blackened stump to the Regeneration Circle, a group of carved wooden thrones with the austerity of Bishop chess pieces set for a covenant. We sat with a couple from Ukraine, now settled in Cork, they talked of the tropical forests of Crimea and missing the scents from all the trees, how our trees have none.
Annie in the Wizard’s hat, the satin sheen on a Chinese Cherry, a Plane with fruits, some lovely asterisk needle patterns and newly budding cones, an old Cork and some lovely climbers inside and out.