Let’s face it, humans are weird. Let me explain, we live in an area of rolling hills and woodlands, so I found it rather odd the other day when I was invited to travel in the ‘Panza Mobile’ (yes folks you heard here first, I do have a car named after me!) with my Mum, grandma and aunt (the humans came too) all the way to Loch Ness to collect – trees!
The early start was interrupted by the senior human struggling to get the indicator thingies working on the trailer but in the end after a very pleasant drive up through Perth, Dalwhinne (nice whiskey) and into the Highlands we arrived at the Trees for Life Estate.
I immediately announced my arrival by running into the Estate Office and making everybody aware that I had arrived. Having crashed the joint, I was sent back to the car in doggy disgrace – I just thought I was being friendly!
Our humans then humped and dumped a whole load of special smelling trees – Junipers - onto the trailer, once it was covered, we went for a great explore around the Trees For Life Estate before we began the return journey home, The Trees for Life team really do seem to have this growing trees thing down to a fine art as there is certainly no shortage of trees around here I can tell you.
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Having returned home safely, and this is the weird thing, we then spent the whole of the next day planting the trees back in the ground, it’s not as if we don’t have enough here already. I tried my best to help but the humans got a bit annoyed when I ran off with the box of bone meal – well I mean – bone meal what do you expect me to do………!
However, I now understand that these are very special trees and that they will provide a really important part of the stuff that goes into the gin – of which I am the star on the bottle!
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Apparently, we have planted a mixture of juniper trees in age from some 10 years old and some that are my age which is almost 2 (physically not mentally according my male human companion). With a bit of luck our own juniper berries should begin to emerge in a year or so.
What’s really important is that regenerating the juniper will bring back a tree that has been disappearing across Scotland and the UK and which will help sustain the environment and provide the key ingredient for our excellent gin – perhaps the trip in the car was worthwhile after all.