A rapid departure last week from Oaklands as we headed to Amsterdam to see old friends. The house and grounds tested us on this quick visit, more so than in the warm summer days when working outside until the evening is a pleasure. This time the light was almost gone by 4pm, the ancient boilers threw tantrums, the AGA had gone on strike, and the sun was rarely sighted. The beauty was undiminished though - I appreciate that not everyone loves the cold wet months in Northern Europe, but for me that absolute change in the light and the trees is still breathtaking.
It is all wetness and low skies this week. The winds are scouring the remaining leaves off the trees, and every patch of grass and path has disappeared under a carpet of foliage. Neil is all for collecting and tidying, mindful of leaf mould in years to come, while I just grab handfuls of leaves to make cosy blankets for dormant hostas and spring bulbs. Uncertain whether ‘cosy’ or indeed any kind of winter protection will ever be a requirement again in this unsettled world: it is late November with notionally the true winter weather yet to come, but the trees are already budding, catkins are popping out on the hazels, and those spring bulbs are already starting to emerge. Floods are engulfing large parts of the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and our drive to Hereford shows the fields surrounding Bodenham submerged and glittering under sheets of water. Iceland and Norway hold ceremonies to bid farewell to glaciers, and Attenborough takes to our screens once more, but this time the images of climate crisis are truly shocking, and those dulcet tones have taken a sharper note. I disturb a hibernating ladybird and feel guilt-stricken: as a child in rural Worcestershire I could never have imagined a time when every beetle and bee and butterfly needed to be helped at every possible opportunity.
Happily our lichens seem to need little assistance here, thanks entirely (I presume) to the clean Herefordshire air and lashings of westerly rains. More trees were felled here this week - three elderly fruit trees, plus an extremely sprightly young poplar with designs on our drains - and the old pear and plum trees were covered in an extraordinary array of ancient flora. I know little about lichens, but find the range of colours and shapes extraordinary - like looking underwater at a bed of corals. The Lake District was the last place I had seen an array like these - feel as if we could happily feed the odd reindeer or two with the quantities here.
Tree felling of course means logs. Or in this case, logs plus vast amounts of twiggy brash, as all the trees were 10-15m tall. Our agreement with the tree company was that the condemned specimens should be felled and sawn into ‘manageable pieces’. Not too sure whose measuring tape settled the ‘manageable’ criterion, but suffice to say Neil and my brother had to spend some considerable time with chainsaws reducing ‘manageable’ to ‘useable’. Fired by our determination not to waste anything, we decided also to save the twigs and ivy-encrusted smaller branches, all of which makes fantastic kindling. As the large wood store filled rapidly and the rain commenced, the reality of processing that much raw material sank in, and we opted instead to let twigs, branches and remaining logs season outside by the wall for a while. This is not all laziness on our part: accepted rural wisdom is a year seasoning the wood outdoors, a year under shelter drying, then in the third year you have perfect logs. Time - or rather the quality of our fires in 2021 - will tell.
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