NOT FAR from where I live there’s a forestry plantation of lodge-pole pines. If you look at it from a distance you’ll notice an odd, umbrella-shaped tree in the middle of the plantation that towers over the pines.

I’M BEHIND schedule with my gardening this year. Mind you, nature is a bit behind schedule too. Blackthorn blossom and primroses in May — they should be flourishing in March. The soil in the vegetable plots is cold.

I DON’T really know how to phrase this — I don’t want to annoy anybody or to end up sounding pedantic or silly. Not everybody realises that there is a time-honoured tradition in the newspaper business that one set of people write the articles and another set write the titles and headlines.

LAST SUMMER I got a phone call from a man who lives locally to say that he had picked up the body of an animal that had been killed on the road and he was having an argument with some of his friends about its identification.