It was a great day out with both of ye! It was a real pleasure to see these woods through your eyes: you helped us more than you can imagine in helping us to consider ways forward in protecting and helping this interesting bit of land.

We’d love to know more about your group. We’re responsible for 40 acres of new and old woods here in South Kerry. And we’ve got some fierce old oak trees.

I’m in …

You’re right of course. It was shot somewhere in Glencar. I shall have to have my club-handed oak sort me out.

You’re probably right - I’ll find out. One of the problems of deer “control” is that it’s all informal. Part of me likes it being outside the normal frameworks, but it does limit its scale. If you eat meat, it is one of the few genuinely guilt-free meats.

Well at least one was culled and this I know on account of I ate it! I was told it came from Killarney any way. It was shot by guided tourist hunters (no they don’t hunt tourists, they are tourists who hunt). They of course just wanted its bonce to show what real men they are. Super tasty.

We’re in. Looking forward to learning more - we’re looking after an interesting bit of woodland in Kerry: this shows the boundary with a neighbour who takes a VERY different view of the balance between production and ecology. Not quite a bog hit lots of peat?

Uragh - one of the most special places in the world. If you doubt the damage that grazing does to trees, here’s a tree at Uragh that thrives on its lake side and has been eaten to death in its land side.

We wanted to put them on the house (S Kerry but a bit more sheltered than you) but the installers (in the interests of an easy installation) chose our bockety shed. Much easier to fit and to do all the wiring and junction boxes and such like. And I dare say wires in attics are a rodent magnet.

I admit to not understanding climate science in any detail. However I am not surprised at this indictment of Sitka monoculture:

Irish forestry ‘net emitter of greenhouse gases’

www.irishtimes.com/news/environ...

It’s a beautiful time of year. There are bigger horizons and the trees show off their bones.

Is the halo effect not caused by the conventional fringe of broadleaf trees around the edges? Wind hardening is a new concept to me …

An irresistible account of his death while fishing and slipping in a river: ” He never let go of his rod, which ended up lashed to his body with fishing line that encircled him innumerable times. … “He was almost mummified.”

<< in “Fishing like a Predator,” suggested that anglers could learn much from birds like the osprey and kingfisher. “[U]nlike real predators,” he playfully concluded, “we always have the option of enjoying our failures as much as our successes.”>>

I thought this odd usage may have been an artefact of translation from United States English but in reading about Ken Miyata (who was a mage like fly fisherman as well as an ecologist) I came across this sentence of his which suggests that it was a favourite and slightly perverse word of his:

Yum yum.

I naturally respond in a hostile fashion to fashionable cant journalism, but … we live in the woods and work from home and if I don’t go out even for a few minutes a day I begin to suffer. And when in the woods I feel the calm descend on me, with a physical sensation like a million micro-masseurs.

Here in the banks of the Roughty we have the chance of doing a controlled experiment. Acres of Ash have been replanted with a diverse mix but we’ve left two areas to sort themselves out. Nearly all Sallies at the moment but we’ll see.

Your book is wonderful; an inspiration. Are there are any remnants of earlier planting on your land, or signs of coppicing or is it all self generated?