We were talking about the trees, and dreaming about planting our own little wood some day, and I said: 'What I would really really like is to grow an oak tree'.
So later on I was pottering about getting on with this and that and I heard the thunder of delicate ladylike footsteps on the stairs and excited voices saying 'Come and see! Come and look!'
'What?' said I. 'What have you done? Trapped a badger? Strung up a property speculator?'
'Come and see! Come and see!' was all they would say. So I did.
In our garden you first come to some flower beds and grassy bits where we chill out and play with the Smallest Relative and eat lunch. Then there are the veggie beds (doing very nicely thank you, despite startling extremes of temperature this spring). Then there is the dell, or the meadow, or whatever it is - a little bit of garden at the end, left to be wild, Hebe's domain, where we are making something like a kind of woodland glade with ferns and hawthorn and whatnot. We've transplanted some random bushes that were planted here and there, to make a little hedgerow separating off the meadow from the rest of the garden (I'm making this sound massive - you should know, our garden probably doesn't make it to 100ft long - we pack in a lot, OK?).
And there, at the bottom of the garden beyond the 'hedgerow', just within our little meadow, there is the darlingest little oak tree, newly starting to grow. It came all by itself as a gift from the trees, because they knew we loved them.
And in the flower bed by the wall, a tiny yew tree starting as well.
Now, how cool is that!
I should have taken a photo for you to see - I'll go and take one in the morning, and add it in.