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ANOTHER LIFE:RAKING UP LEAVES for the compost heap (not, these days, for a whiff of spicy blue bonfire smoke) ought to induce some satisfaction with the world. A little melancholy is allowed, perhaps, but of the sweeter sort; nothing to mar a leisurely musing on nature's continuity, renewal, all that, writes Michael Viney

But even as I heaped the wheelbarrow, a new forestry missive was spiralling into my inbox. Waiting there already were 155 pages of the new Review of Forest Policy for the Heritage Council and an acerbic 10-page position-paper from Friends of the Irish Environment. Now came a cry against government spending cuts from Woodlands of Ireland, lamenting the "millions of oak seedlings" that could be lost to the Native Woodlands Scheme. And following by snail-mail, as if to soothe, came a corporate DVD from Coillte on "Restoring Priority Woodland Habitats in Ireland", full of worthy, EU-subsidised doings in precious vestiges of ancient forest.