From little acorns?

Many years ago, on a sunny autumn walk in Lancashire, my son, then 4, decided that acorns were rather wonderful. When his pockets were full he asked me to take them, and they got dumped in the sort of plastic bag that parents usually have tucked away somewhere, containing crumbs of duck-bread, or broken crayons. Several pocket-loads of acorns ended up in the bag, then we got the train back to London and forgot about it.

Some months later, looking for a bag for duck-bread or crayons or somesuch, I came across the bag of acorns. In the warmth and darkness and moisture many had germinated so son and I spent an afternoon carefully planting them the right way up into pots. We put them on a wall outside and forgot about them.

Some more months later we moved to Oxford, and when I was collecting things from the garden to take with us I found five pots with thriving young oak trees. They duly came in the van to Oxford. We put them into our new tangle of a garden and forgot about them.

Yet more months later I saw an ad for a children's tree day. They were invited to an Oxford park to plant young trees and could bring their own if they wanted. Off we went, with our five baby oaks, and son planted them all.

From time to time I've looked at the range of trees in the children's copse and wondered whether any of our oaks survived.

Today, in the middle of a horrible time at work, I had to head out to somewhere near that park. It was a beautiful afternoon so I took a detour to shake work out of my mind and look at  the oaks.

Who knows whether this grew from my four-year-old's acorn or from someone else's. Doesn't matter really.