Since learning that villagers can contribute their garden waste to the village bonfire, I’ve been feeling pretty obsessive about taking advantage of it to clear the garden a little. An acre and a half of overgrowth (if such a thing exists) is a little much to put into a green bin for fortnightly collection.
I am not the only one. The village gardens have been humming with activity this week and every other house has a tree company van outside.
OK, so I am the only one. Whereas every other garden’s had a short back and sides with a chainsaw, I have been working with a little hand saw.
I started at the gate. There was no reason other than that I’d had a little advice from Dougie: cut all that back, the somethingorothers and the roses, it’ll all grow back. And he also warned that the security light would be responding to the warmth of the plant growing round it, and security lights have 500 Watt bulbs. Blimey.
So I slaved. Shh, shh, shh went my saw. Clip, clip, clip. All with the backing band of the neighbourhood chainsaws.
Then a nice man from the council turned up. This is a conservation area so we can’t do any tree work without permission (not that I can really believe that all those branches of the village bonfire come with the full 6 weeks’ notice planning permission). A sycamore that lost a branch over the summer and there’s an ash that the tree man thought should go so he applied for planning permission to take them down. The ash is at the very back of the garden, hanging over Tim’s rather tidy garden and the broken down fence. Ian had assumed the worst of the fence, children taking over the garden and we’d shoo them away and be cursed by the Selfish Giant. But no, the fence is down because it was Tim’s shortcut to Norman whom he cared for in later years. Tim looks like he’s well into his 70s himself, layered in cardigans and good cheer, and it’s hard to imagine him as a nursemaid. It turns out the King Charles spaniel we met over the summer is Tim’s – come to share Norman’s chocolate biscuits but Norman and his biscuits are no more.
The niceness is, I assume, a characteristic of tree men rather than council workers. They are like mountain air. Their love of nature and ability to name everything they see is somehow energizing. He told me that we have an Indian bean tree. You can’t eat the beans.
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The nice man gave more advice on how far back to cut the climbing plum.. did I imagine that name? I cut it back some more, but my heart was no longer in it. It was the nice man’s fault. My long walk to the ash left me feeling I was in the throes of the gardening equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.
That was Tuesday. Wednesday was swallowed up in taking Oriana to view her new nursery. They were impressed how well she settled, but of course really it was some kind of sick social experiment in which I deprived her for a fortnight of the company of anyone unrelated then watched her desperate quest for attention.
To my great relief, ladies’ night in the pub is but once a month. Well after midnight various of my fellow drinkers started to bow out, apologising that they were party poopers. I accepted an offer for a nightcap at someone’s house – in for a penny, in for a pound – and got home at 2. But Ian could not be persuaded to do the school run.
Time to clear the cobwebs. I opted this time for branches large enough that they’d be pain to get to the tip. The ailing sycamore I was told is hardwood and would make great firewood. Perhaps so, but it was so brittle that I could snap off even quite large branches. We had several bonfire-trips’ worth of branches. Ian was suitably unimpressed.
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| The fallen sycamore branch |
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| A nude branch and its debris |
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| And ready to go |
Well, perhaps the gardening was a waste of time, but it did blow the cobwebs away... and anyway, you've to to start somewhere.
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