There have been many jokes in the last two years. We are “gentleman foresters”, the “city girl with big plans”, a “real nutjob” and “that woman and her f***in’ trees”. And these are just the things that have been said to our faces.

Our forest is flying, an act of imagination made real. Small knee-high trees are heading sky high. You can almost see them growing.

It’s been four years since we bought 40 acres of farmland in Co Roscommon. Two-and-a-half years ago, 27 acres of it were planted with thousands of small saplings: birches, oaks, alders, hazels, scots pines, willows and crab apples. All the costs of planting the forest were paid by the Government’s Native Woodland Establishment scheme. Each of these 24,000 trees was firmed with a boot into a clump of sodden earth. Forester Bernard Kiernan was our expert guide every step of the way. A documentary was made, capturing the tentative first steps and some of the deep-rooted emotions around nature restoration in Ireland.

This year’s growing season began with one tree in a hurry. At the end of March, a lone birch in a sheltered dip wore a full coat of soft green leaves, while the rest of the trees were still winter bare. “Come on. We do this now.” This, the ambitious birch seemed to be urging its field companions. And soon they did. Hundreds of thousands of soft green leaves unfolded from tiny buds to flutter above the grass and rushes. They soaked up the sun of the long summer and stored it in a thick ring of growth in their swelling trunks, light made solid. Their roots deepened and tightened their grip, pumping food made from sunlight into the soil microbes, who in turn fed the trees. The dance has begun, a wood-wide-web of collaboration.

We can measure their thriving with our hands. The two-year-old saplings planted in April 2023 were pencil-thin, some even thinner. Now, many of their trunks are more than a hand span. My thumb and forefinger no longer meet around them. They are hefty, some over four metres tall, on their way to being huggable. If we live long enough, we may struggle to get two arms around them. They are starting to leave our human scale behind, time and weather written down ring after ring in timber and branch. Last year we planted more varieties: rowans, wild cherries, spindle, guelder rose, aspen, alder buckthorn and whitebeam.

Already, everything has shifted in these small wet fields.