When we were taking up the patio yesterday,
there was one paving slab that we couldn't take out; the one
cut to go around the drain below the kitchen window. When
I originally laid it down, twenty years ago, I never got around
to filling in the gaps and in the crevice next to the grate
an elder sapling had sprouted up. Birds eat
elder berries and spread the seeds in their droppings, so
that's probably how it found its way here.
The only way to get it out was to saw it into
sections and pull it out in bits.
I think these slices of the little stump,
scanned here life-sized, have a Tolkienesque, Arthur Rackham
look to them. 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk
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