Wandering palms

Some rain today, but at the moment, 4pm, the sun's just popped out. I've just had a tree surgeon in to give me  a price for felling a sizeable beech tree on the slope below my house. Unfortunately it's growing right over the sewage pipe, which is not a good idea! Why didn't someone pull it out 48 years ago - it would have saved me a lot of money! It's also a good example of why pollarding a tree (cutting the branches off at a point somewhere above the trunk) is not a good idea, in my humble opinion. All the cut branches have regrown and all the junctions are rotten. I'm very pleased to see that the RHS states 'An alternative to pollarding is to plant a tree which doesn't grow so large and therefore won't need pollarding.' Well said!

Anyway, as I haven't been out further than the garden today here's a Blip of some palm seedlings I rescued on my last visit to Arduaine. I grew them from seed acquired from eBay. The one on the right is Trachycarpus takil, from the foothills of the Himalaya and the others are Chamaerops humilis var. cerifera, from Southern Europe. I doubt that I'll live long enough to climb them!