A Visit to Garnet Woods - CM6 1LR

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This is worth a separate post on it's own. Garnet Woods: What a lovely, natural wooded area of England. It is so typical of many of these woods dotted around the country. My favourite tree is the Silver Birch, so resplendent in the summer sunshine!

These woods are literally "breathing and eating" at this time, alive with photosynthesis and vibrant bird song in the canopy above and on the floor carpet: quietly alive with tons of ectomycorrhizae mycelium (fungus) and trillions of bacteria. I was treading on a lush carpet up to 6 inches deep in organic matter in some places. Rotting vegetation.

I like to think of the trees as the lungs, and the fungi/bacteria as the bowels, working over and recycling the organic life in the "organism" of the woods.

It does make me pause though to realise that once (just 2000 years ago,) the entirety of this island was covered, wall to wall, with forested areas such as this...How sad that we can only explore a few hundred acres (a postage stamp in comparison to the whole) now in the 21st Century....All the more reason to preserve these beautiful areas for posterity...

Oh yes, look out for the "Watcher of the Woods"