Rooty

Returning to Anderwood today the sun shone brightly and the woods had a inviting feel to them. Anderwood Enclosure (1811) a strange wood, at once open, airy and closed; the mature Oaks have thinned through lose, stumps and trunks are frequent, the spaces created now occupied by birch, holly, naturalised young Oaks and others. I had come to collect a piece of wood for a teacher doing a topic on nature, the ideal piece was spotted last evening, a 2m mass of Ivy which once smothered a young tree; the tree had all but disappeared, leaving the skeleton of Ivy. The side branches were removed to leave a piece of natural art. The ends needed to be lashed to stop the Ivy mass unravelling. I made for nearby coniferous woods; on the way, picking up a stick, I fashioned a digging stick and on arrival at the conifers, grubbed away in the soft peaty soil searching for stringy roots. I tried a couple of different tree types and the Pine came out best, providing two meter length roots of near continuous gauge. Returning to the Ivy, washing the roots on the way, I set about splitting the roots to produce flexible binding material; bound the ends of the Ivy and was off.