Tony Croft aka hamadryad

good post

well said! i too dont take too much notice of the doom and gloom brigade, nature always heals, and i doubt the guys sitting in wall street have any idea what that healing is like, each to thier own eh.

Dont leave food in the van, or food wrappers, and get a cat!

some nice pics there monkey, funny as i was thinking of moss wraps to encourage the woundwoods and advantigous roots to make new connections and discrete living channels! spagnum moss a little humus, some nettly cordage wrap, think this has some worth in trying dont you?

going to answer these one after the other in line and order! patronising yes you was, YOU captalisation on save implies you are into provocation more than participation, you seem to enjoy provoking more than evoking. i say i am skint but as a climber on top dollar. this is a situation i will try to clarify for you. when i was hammered in 18 months theft wise it took EVERY ounce of resource to stay operating, even to debt, then they came and took the truck and chipper to finish me off, at the same point i lost my partner (long story abusive alcaholic, lost my best mate (cared for elderly uncle) to liver cancer and my own mother and her sister tried to sell this my home from under my feet. i had to take a sharks mortgage, pay of that and 54 grands worth of company debt, i have a mortgage that is 250 a month MORE than high st rates, and when i cant keep up, i get hit with late charges by all and sundry. but i fight, like a pure bred english bull terrier, and i am winning the game step by step. i dont blame the system, i blame myself AND the system, cos the system sucks, the poor are penalised, if you cant pay a bill at the end of the month the charges that are applied kil your chances of the next payment and it spirals, its a hard system to get out of and once your tarnished your scum and no body cuts you slack, because your the fodder this countries unproductive nature feeds on. As for going back to a time less complicated it will never happen in a modern society, you seem to think and others i am suggesting dropping all the equal rights good working conditions laws that are in place today, what am I, some sort of idiot!

good on ya fella, i hope you get the succses you deserve. It only requires imagination on our parts to bring change.

wow, theres some deep currents in this thread! is modern agriculture the most efficient production of food? or is it just that we do not appreciate a diverse range of food like that wich wood be avaliable in "alternative methods? And I totaly agree about the money thing, we are kept "docile" by a system that keeps our nose to the wheel, and keeps enough fear of loss to stop us wanting to rock that boat too much.

it might be chaos, but like you say YAYE!

yeah i know Mr Pike, he lives round my local pond, snappy old fella though!

got to say, this is a new phenomina to me! never heard of anyone experiencing these things before but sounds commonplace! I do however laugh and scream a bit histericaly whilst doing big lombardis in gales! it has to be said it is rather unerving!

What makes me die is all the fuss over these bees, they transport 100's of thousands of bees to a massive mono culture for two weeks traveling upwards of a thousand miles, two weeks on and then moved again, and they wonder why the bees are stressed and geting viruses! tonkas. i think modern agriculture techniques will eventualy be faded out, iether that or they will work out organics and diverse growing is the rigght way AFTER the mono cultures and modern agriculture goes into a collapse, imagine! you only have to look down from a plane to see how much of our land mass is devoted to crops, if that all went tits up like the potatoe famine, it would cause anarky

thats EXACTLY what i thought! im with you on this one andy!

Most of you will have families to spend time with over the next few days so for those who will be vacant and everyone else, merry christmas i hope you all have a wicked holiday. and thanks to everyone for posting in my insane dribble threads, for the compliments and negative inputs too! its all good. The respect Ive been shown for one or two images and some postings has been "special" and I appreciate those comments a great deal. And an extra special thanks to the EPIC! comment guy! that made me laugh out loud! What a great bunch, of nutters you are! merry crimbo!

do you not think though that if we can combine much of the older ways with the best of the modern we will have a better richer society and lives? rather than just throwing away what is essentialy essentail skills? what if there was a pandemic in 200 years time and all those people living so lost from nature had to suddenly get on with it? modern life is at present unsustainable, and prone to catastrophe, is it not?

i know what you mean, but i think the core of this is really a lot more simple than Alan can communicate! even i cant understand it all, but I do know that a lot of it makes a lot of sense to me, and i can see that under the floral and academic phylosophical language there is a great thought proscess going on. and i am in

Nice comment.

point taken and duly noted, but dont you think we just have "different" hardships now? like everything is relative?

listen wee bro, 2 years at the shrink sorted out my anger issues! Ive done the personal journey all my life mate, i dont get angry anymore, i have my ups and downs, and once in a while i curl up in a ball with the dog and ball my eyes out cos life is so darn hard at times, but then i laugh at myself and everythings just dandy.

as for sorting myself out, thats why im doing the school thing, without it I am unemployable for anything other than climbing and i already get top wack on that front, less anyone here has a better offer!

I am not that stressed shreks wee brother, i get out for one day in an ancient wood and all my troubles fade away, as soon as i see an old tree or a new fungus i am "healed" Its funny, i found the olive oysterling a few weeks ago, my first record of it, it is these things that make my life a happy one, the rest is just life, and i get on with it, but my walks with my dog camera in hand, thats our time, and we make the absolute most of it. maybe more than most as it is a rare event to me, special times worth living for.

Did anyone see the national geographic article oct 2009? with the super panoramic pull out? an image of a redwood, made up of 84 seperate images, it was awsome. national geographic rocks IMO:thumbup1:

Do you know how many times I have considered the "alternative" lifestyle? i could buy a decent sized wood on the money tied up in these bricks, and you need no planning permision for sub terranian! trust me, i aint far off the coppice wood and charcoal route!

well fella, your tone, suggests different. and if you have THAT cosy a life good for you mate, i cant say the same, I have still to work almost seven days a week, when work is avaliable, not lately i cant afford this mortgage on a house i cant afford to renovate, going to school for fees i cant afford and driving a clapped out ford escort that is JUST legal, but I still love my life! its soulfull man!

what am i supposed to be, some sort of messiah! this is supposed to be about pollards not lifestyles! o.k maybe this thread is as much about me venting certain fustrations with the way we are today, the way i am TOLD to do my job, like fell to ground a chestnut that has a bee colony in it, on getting to the job i find a gallon of petrol was poured into the hive and oh now it seems the option was given by the LA local forester to pollard it to retain the habitat! so maybe this thread is as much about me desperatley and i do mean desperatley, to the point off tears trying to change how and why we work so this s99t doesnt happen. so that diversity is encouraged and not discouraged. and wanting desperatley to stop those ancient woodlands going into terminal decline because to me they are my church, my university and my playground. but whatever way this thread goes, really doesnt matter, the content is first class and were having a good old tree natter, which is BLINDIN innit!

a survey said that the happiest people in britain earnt on average £250 a week, food for thought. we have more things to bitch about now than ever before, only its worse because were not as tired at the end of the day and we have lost those "evening winter tasks that fullfilled our creative needs and fed our souls. native crafts are some of the finest art youll ever see, do you think these objects where created by people who had THAT hard a time? these were not made from nescesity, these are elaborate art works, that take many hundreds if not thousands of hours to make and complete. there is a lot to be said for the old ways, maybe not in the narow view, but on a deeper more spiritual level.