…..and even the trees are hippies.

Cornwall is an amazing county – I know I’ve said that until everyone I say it to is bored rigid with the viewpoint. This month we’ve had more-or-less unbroken sunshine as Mother Nature has smiled on us for weeks on end. Even though we’d always say that we live in a fantastic place, it’s so much easier to say that when you’re being warmed by the sun while walking down the road from the shop and looking across at Dartmoor.

I must say, it’s a lot less brutal an experience than walking down there when the rain is horizontal and it’s hard to stay on your feet with the force of the wind. That’s not to mention having no view whatsoever because you’re actually in the middle of a cloud.

One of the interesting things about Cornwall is that by-and-large it’s only in the towns and city (Truro) that we have streets with names. In most/many of the villages, there are no street names and you find your way by landmark and house name. We’ve not lived in a street with a name since we’ve been here (in either house), although in both cases, we’ve lived in a small group of houses that share a common name if you see what I mean. Although, it’s only locals who know that the group of houses shares a common name because there is nothing that declares the name of the group anywhere.

This is quirky and rather nice, although it’s a bit frustrating when you’re looking for a particular house.

Our trees are so laid back that they all have beards and look like groups of hippies lolling around in the countryside communing with nature and espousing world peace. Their beards catch little bits of debris, an odd twig, a leaf, a feather but that doesn’t bother them, they simply carry on waving around in the breeze until their “passenger” drifts off to find another place to rest a while.

The beards would not be possible without something that’s abundant in Cornwall and rare in our old home – clean air. They’re a type of lichen called Usnea and while I was finding this out, I discovered that they’ve got a number of special properties including “antiherbivore” – I wonder what would happen if I took some of my trees in the garden, steeped it in water then sprayed it on my flower borders? Would it put off the rabbits? I might just give it a go as I’m running the battle of a zillion baby bunnies of late.

So, we have streets that are nameless and we have trees that have beards. We live in a special place.