Conker Canker Conquered?

Last summer our horse chestnut trees were hit by a double plague - something was destroying the roots, something else was burrowing into the leaves. (Notice the technical terms here). This is how they looked , brown-leaved and sad, and autumn still a couple of months away. Some of the huge proud trees that had stood for a century or more looked like they were in real trouble, and the drought was aggravating matters.


This is a photo, taken yesterday, of the beautiful horse chestnut tree growing in a garden a few doors down from me. It's looking magnificent, and I can only hope that the crisis has passed, at least fot those trees with just the leaf miner.


By the way, for those across the pond, the horse chestnut tree is called a conker tree, because the horse chestnuts are known as conkers and are used in a children's game, in which they thread them on strings and swing them against each other's conkers, trying to break them.

Can you see the beautiful pink cherry blossom behind the horse chestnut? Spring is definitely sprung.