5 October 1979.
WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE.
I live in an area that was once part of the Forest of Arden. The road next to ours is called (and not without reason) Broad Oaks Road, and one of the landmarks I look for on my way home on a dark winter’s night is a very large oak tree at the edge of the pavement near my house. So it is no
wonder that I can usually find self-sown oak seedlings in the more neglected parts of my garden. I have made several attempts to make a bonsai from one of these seedlings and on one such I found myself in luck. The seedling was quite a good shape, about twelve inches high, with an interesting twist in the trunk about two inches from the ground, and it was growing over a large flat concealed stone, so that there was in effect no tap root. The roots were shallow and horizontal, to follow the line of obstruction presented by the stone. This gift of good fortune I nurtured carefully for two years in a ‘landscape tray’, positioned in such a way that the natural sideways slant of the tree leaned over a piece of yellow lava rock. In the sunlight the rock turned golden in colour and the dappled green shade of the overhanging oak leaves was lovely.
In the bitter winter of 1978/79 my landscape tray was buried for several weeks under an eight inch blanket of snow. Wonderful stuff snow. Each snowflake is so flimsy you can easily wipe it away, crush melt and destroy it with a finger-tip. Under a microscope it can be seen that each snowflake is a perfect six-sided symmetrical pattern of marvellous intricacy. And each snowflake is different from every other. Flimsy, delicate, beautiful, every snowflake. But snow! Snow blocks roads, stops railways, brings down telephone lines, creates havoc, and always, always catches us by surprise and completely unprepared.
Central /
– 2 –
Central heating has one great disadvantage. As I sit here in my shirt-sleeves I find it hard to realise that outside, just beyond that thin piece of glass, the temperature is at zero centigrade. My romantic mind is full of the crystalline patterns of snowflakes. I picture my little oak tree snug and warm under its mantle of protecting snow where the searing winds cannot scorch and desiccate it. And talking about scorch and desiccate, yes it is rather warm and it’s making me feel thirsty, so what about a little drink? Good idea!
I think it was the Ancient Mariner who found himself in the position where there was ‘water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink’. So it was with my little oak tree, surrounded by water in the form of snowflakes, in two inches of soil, where the water was frozen and not a drop available to drink. And no tap root to draw water from below the frost level.
The happy ending to this story is that the little oak tree did not actually die of thirst, though it was a near thing. And the author also survived though what he drank wasn’t just plain water.
Matt Weir.
Carefully and lovingly reproduced and repurposed, republished and uploaded by Alex Watt, Saturday, 14th February, 2026
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