For sale, one previous owner.

So I'm selling the mitre saw I bought.

Stop laughing at the back.

Why am I selling it?

It's not the right tool for the job. It's not accurate enough. And, let's be honest, I'm not the best woodworker around. The mitre cuts are close, but just a little out. When I assemble the cut stock to make the frame, there are gaps.

Not huge gaps, you understand. Nothing that would make the average joiner blink an eye, but unacceptable in a picture frame.

I've tried fixing this. Test cuts every time I set the blade, the cut pieces examined against a compound square. Excess wood shaved off with a block plane and a mitred shooting board. I even built a rotary framing sander from an old grinding wheel.

All to no avail.

Failure is not always a challenge. Sometimes it's life's way of telling you to try a different approach.

I'm a handy sort of chap. I could, for example, in theory, learn how to make my own shoes. But there are many excellent reasons why I don't.* Similarly, I have never tried to do my own dentistry. Just last month I also discovered that I really, really shouldn't attempt plumbing.

And I'm not going to do my own framing any more, but I'm going to pay someone else to make a really good job of it.

What valuable life lesson can we draw from my humiliating about face?

'Enthusiasm and determination are no substitute for surly acceptance of one's own inadequacy.'

Sounds a little harsh. Let's put a better spin on it.

How about this:

'When a task requires resources and skills you don't possess, pay an expert to do it.'

Better. Here's a cloud study:

* Not least being that it would be weird. Who does that?

DISTINGUISHED LOCAL TREES

I hesitate to attribute to a tree any such thing as character, but there are trees around my home that are as recognizable to me as old friends.

Off the top of my head, I can bring to mind two fine examples of Aruacaria aruacana, the 'monkey puzzle', in gardens. Add to them, at the side of a country road, the ivy covered oak that looks like something out of a Disney animation. Then there's the handsome cedar on the front lawn of a local National Trust property.

They draw the eye, and give pleasure. I have drawn, and painted, and photographed them.

Over the past few weeks I've ransacked old sketchbooks and pored over folders of paintings to gather together the best tree pictures I have made. They are collected here, in a book, for your viewing pleasure.

Algernon Blackwood wrote a story, The man whom the trees loved, about a painter who specialized in portraits of his favourite trees. While I share that character's affection for his subject, I hope that I'm not only a tree painter, just as I hope to evade his fate. (The trees steal him away.)

I also hope this small book gives you some of the pleasure I have enjoyed in making the drawings and paintings that fill it. I have always found the countryside to be a place of beauty and pleasure, and the trees in these pages have played a large part in that.