Leaf by Leaf Press

'Our mission is to publish together, word by word, leaf by leaf.'

Leaf by Leaf Press is a new and exciting cooperative of writers.
A venture determined to use our individual talents, skills and strengths to bring the best of our writing to the world.

The Authors

Leaf by Leaf Books

What we do

The Leaf by Leaf News

No more tweets from Elon.
Bluesky coming soon.

The Leaf by Leaf Blogs

We have our own Leaf by Leaf Blog and a couple of our authors also maintain their own. Vicky Turrell continues her very popular series of 'Notes from the country' and Bernard Pearson has his own website and blog, here.

From Notes from the country

Why don't things stay the same?

Saturday 7th Jun 2025

 


“Some are, some aren’t”

“What do you mean?”

“Some are modern and some are not”

We were buying a replacement plant pot for a shrub we had. The diameter was thirty centimetres. And the plant was quickly outgrowing the container with its roots showing through the holes in the bottom. We (foolishly) had not taken anything to make a measurement. The new pot was measured in old fashioned inches. It was fifteen inches. Is that more or less than thirty centimetres? Nothing is as it used to be these days.

The poor old elm trees must think that too. A friend of mine was telling me that in her overgrown hedge she gets sapling elms growing, but when they get to a certain height they die off. Her gardener said that it was because the beetles fly at a certain height, so young elm trees can thrive until they reach the height of the beetles’ flight. I am not sure about that, but I know that it is not the beetle that kills the elm, it is the fungus that it unwittingly carries. The same is happening to our ash trees but without a beetle the spores of the ash die-back travel on the wind. Our ash trees are going the way of the elms and there is nothing we can do to help.

Small builders do not seem to have to help wildlife in the same way now. To support the building of much needed homes the government is reviewing the original rules ensuring the care of wildlife if their environment is disturbed. So, we are trying to see what we can do to encourage wildlife in our garden. We are making a pond and already birds are coming to take a drink and we have seen a bat flying over in the night. But the numbers and variety of birds are dwindling, nothing is the same.

I was talking to my hairdresser about Covid, which seems so long ago now but life after the pandemic is not the same either. Things have changed. Even though it seems to be all over we still remember.

“I had to wear a mask and a visor as well as gloves all the time,” she said, “It was almost impossible to do any colouring work with gloves on.”

I did not think that people would be having their hair coloured whilst there was a chance of getting Covid. I remember going for an essential blood test with a mask on, a visor and an emergency cape and hood. Imagine that, going to the nurse wearing the equivalent of a huge plastic bag.

Thank goodness nothing is as it used to be.



 

Contact Leaf by Leaf

Leaf by Leaf Press welcome any comments or enquiries you may have.
Please fill out the form below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Also please consider joining our mailing list to be kept up to date with Leaf by Leaf events.






© Leaf by Leaf Press Ltd. All Rights Reserved