TREES are amazing, are they not?

Last winter, I had a bit of a chain-saw fest and lopped off quite a few trees that had gone a bit rampant.

One was a sort of decorative bush/tree type thingy (four hours of gardening phone-in's with Reg Moule educated me) and I thought it might be an idea to get rid of it, so I cut it right back and then thought to dig up the roots.

But lo and behold, a new tree has sprung up from the remnants and it is really pretty, to the extent that I shall trim it back a little this winter and nurture it.

I've sort of got into gardening of late, not that I know much about it, but l like it to look tidy and I can see how people get totally hooked on it.

It's lovely on a sunny morning to get out there and work with nature, and when you plant something and it grows, there's great satisfaction.

I'm sure everyone else in the world worked that out a long time ago, but it is something that has dawned on me in the last few months.

Did you think there would be no sport in this week's column? Dream on.

Off to Lords, tomorrow, with the county, and I spent a fascinating few minutes with a couple of county stalwarts Martin Horton and Roy Booth this week, looking back at that first ever Lords final in 1963.

Were you there? I remember most of it well, with Roy batting in the gloom and Ted Dexter, the skipper of Sussex, who had eight fielders on the boundary.

Good to have a natter with the pair this week and they still remember it all so clearly, Roy even brought along his loser's medal.

I suppose the pictures of the week were of Paula Radcliff as she pulled up in the marathon. Whether she could, or should, have finished you can argue, but how sorry I felt for her.

There was nobody to go up and put an arm around her, give her a drink, pick her up and take her home.

Tell you what, if I had been there, I would have to have nipped across and consoled the poor lass.

Sport - the highs and the lows - but at the end of it all, it's only sport.

John Arlott, the great man, once said: "There are times when we take sport too seriously and life too lightly." How true.

Come on the County.