While travelling by train across the Alps last week I noticed this striking phenomenon. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground but the area immediately below each tree was clear.
I don’t know if this is due to the soil there getting warmed up by the activity of the tree roots, or there’s another explanation. (If you know, maybe you could let me know).
Then I was chatting with a gardener yesterday about how the blossom on the fruit trees varies so much from year to year, and he mentioned he had some fruit trees which had produced virtually no blossom, and no fruit, over the last two years but this Spring, after France’s wettest winter on record they’ve all started to blossom. He said, “You see, plants know what they need and when they get it they flourish. In this case it was water!”
I think that’s so true, and this gardening wisdom is something we could pay more attention to in life, especially in health care and in politics.
In health care we direct most of our efforts towards fighting disease but we need to create the conditions for healing during the repair and recovery phase. We’re not so good at that, maybe because we know nature does it best. When we supply a clean environment, pollution free, decent nutrition, adequate, clean water, rest, mobilisation exercise, and emotional support, healing has its best chance.
Similarly, if we want more people to suffer less disease, we need to create the societal conditions for healthy lives. Decent housing, nutritious diets, clean water, avoidance of pollution, the creation of good, stable, secure employment, reducing poverty and inequality and supplying high quality education for all, are all things which create the conditions for what human beings need to live healthy lives.
Maybe, one day, a political party will put forward just such a vision – the creation of a healthy society by making available what human beings need to live healthy lives.
Maybe, one day, we’ll have a genuine “health” service which puts as much effort into healing as it does tackling disease.
Heroes Not Zombies 
It’s caused by the snow on the branch s above thawing and dripping on to the snow below melting it!
Ah, so from above, not from below? I thought it might relate to soil temperature
Well it could be a bit of both Bob. Nature moves in mysterious ways as no doubt we’ll find out again tomorrow with Storm Kathleen!
And not or!