Where did the time go?
Where did the time go? Orange-red rosehips are already glowing fatly on the ferocious rose that I allow to ramble and bloom unchecked all spring and summer, across the tops of tall shrubs and a small tree – brightening the autumn garden now, visible from my window and set to feed the birds all winter.
Gardens, and ash trees, are essential elements in my new novel ‘Husbandry’, also out this autumn – after a good two years in the making. It’s a light ‘whodunnit’ that soon becomes a thorny ‘who will do it’ challenge. How far would you go, to salvage a spiky and unravelling human friend?
Serendipitously, this autumn has brought the hot news that an ash is the Woodland Trust’s UK Tree of the Year 2025. After learning – gleaning is perhaps more accurate – a lot about ashes during research for the book, I find it hugely satisfying that Glasgow’s lofty 175-year old, graceful urban ash tree in Argyle Street is currently the nation’s favourite tree.
Mine, in the novel, are part of a more rural copse and a little older; fictional, but steeped in their species’ history and humanity’s interactions with it, and increasingly ‘present’ to the people at the centre of my contemporary twisty story.
Next stop for Argyle Street’s very real ash tree is a chance of becoming European Tree of the Year 2026. I hope it wins.