We are losing a lot of trees in the UK. There are the headline diseases - Ash die-back is just one. On top of that we have had some stressfully hot summers recently and extended wet periods in other seasons. Throw in some strong winds and you get trees snapping or simply being uprooted - rotting roots in soft earth.

I live next door to a park with a lot of trees in it and there is a lot of "survival of the fittest" going on. Its not all bad because the park was partly overrun with some quite anti social non-natives (we call them laurels - they are from South America, can't remember the formal name). The laurels caused spindly growth - thin trunks, few branches in species that could escape vertically. Also there was a density problem which is being sorted out gradually.

Sadly a 700+ year old oak keeled over recently. It was responding really well to a major trim done five or so years ago but it turns out that our current weather is worse than a mini ice age.

Dormice are/were an iconic rodent in the UK that nearly no one has ever seen these days. My mum (so think 1940-60s, Devon farm girl) recalled seeing them everywhere. She also recalled beaches covered in mackerel fish in the morning after a night with a full moon or something similar. You don't see that now that the seas are fished out. However, I recently visited Chesil beach in Dorset and there were loads of cuttlefish bones on the beach. Hopefully that means there are loads of cuttlefish living and dying out at sea and I'll tentatively take that as a positive sign.

Do dormice need rope bridges? I think it does help to patch over a particular situation, quickly and quite cheaply but its not exactly a panacea for the real woes of the world.

Dormice are possibly the cutest rodent ever - call me out and submit your favourite rodent!