Dear Readers, I spotted this London Plane on New Year’s Eve, a time when we are meant to be considering the year that has gone, and looking forward to the year to come. What a magnificent beast the tree is! Probably planted when Bedford Square was originally built (around  1775), the tree has grown and grown and is starting to gobble up the insolent metal fence that is supposed to contain it. As it oozes out onto the flagstones at a rate of a centimetre or so every few years, I wonder when it will stop. Will it eat the Georgian houses opposite? Will the whole of London eventually be one giant tree? There are worse fates, for sure.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience. There’s the street tree cut back to a stump, which is regenerating on Fortis Green. There are the weeds that are flowering in December, regardless of whether there’s anything about to pollinate them. And on the personal front, there’s my broken leg, which is about 90 percent back to normal now, I’d say, in spite of its rather horrible fracture.

Plus I’m really, really hoping to see some green on my whitebeam and hawthorn trees come the spring. Fingers crossed!

It’s a funny old thing, resilience. As I’ve learned with my leg, it’s both about pushing yourself and knowing  when to rest and give yourself a break (not literally of course). It’s about the gradual but consistent application of pushback, whether it’s against a metal fence or a government. It’s about determining where your energies are best deployed, and about not trying to do everything at once. Nature knows this – the roots of a plant can find their way through concrete, and it’s the thing that you do everyday for five minutes, without thinking almost, that will make the difference in the end.

And here is a most uncharacteristic poem by Sylvia Plath that I hadn’t come across before – I think it sums up everything that I’m thinking about at the moment. In what is likely to be yet another ‘interesting’ year, let us all summon up our inner fungi.

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.