Yes, we're going to get plenty about trees in the next weeks and months. Crann has announced its Autumn Festival of Trees, Feile Shamhna na gCrann, for October/November and there will be ceremonies and plantings all over the place. With a copy of its magazine Releafing Ireland comes a supplement by John Feehan on "The Spirit of Trees", a fine, long essay.
Just one paragraph from a quick perusal: "Today, we are trying. . .to restore the richness of trees to our experience, so that we and our children can find again woods in May floored with wood anemones and bluebells and feel this is where we are meant to be. A world without woods is a world without healing of the human spirit. They are part of what we are. Groves have stood at the edge of mystery in the human psyche from our very beginnings. Whispering trees stand at the dawn of human awareness on the threshold of our first consciousness. . .They are part of the make-up of the cradle of our humanity in the childhood of our species."
Yes, to start with the children is a worthy idea. Sean Dempsey of Kiltale, Dunsany, Co Meath writes: "Could I suggest to you that you might encourage young children to collect fruits of various trees this season and plant them? This year has been particularly good for acorns, beech nuts, birch seed, rowans, etc. and it would be good to plant them either at their school or in some pots at home." He says that next year some organisation might arrange a collection point for the seedlings and have them brought on in some designated place, sponsored by a State or business organisation, to be a fitting memorial for the late Freda Rountree.
Sean, a teacher, has trees from Freda growing in his garden. The germ of an idea which someone reading this might take up. And, just for fun, what about the old idea canvassed yearly in this corner (and practised) of placing acorns, point down, in Ballygowan or similar bottles filled with water, so that children and others can watch, first, the roots descending to the bottom; eventually the side of the acorn opens and the shoot, your eventual tree, snakes up through the water and out of the mouth of the bottle.
If the acorn is too slim for the bottle top, prop it in with matchsticks or twigs. There are trees many feet high which started out like this.