Thursday 5 February 2015

winter garden tidy

The lettuce farm has cut their side of the hedge that separates us.  It is our hedge, and as a matter of courtesy they called round yesterday to say that they were going to trim it, and ask if there was anything in it they should be careful of.  There isn't, but it was nice of them to ask, and I was pleased that they only took off the bits that were sticking out into the field margin, and didn't try to go along the top levelling it.  That would have had me rushing hysterically towards the driver, arms flailing like windmills.

An industrial sized mechanical hedge cutter is extremely noisy, and sends small pieces of mashed up twig shooting twenty or thirty feet beyond the side of the hedge that's not even being cut, so I thought that while they did their side, I'd better go and do something safely out of the way.  The hornbeam would have to wait for another day.  I retreated to the bottom of the back garden as being about as far away from the monster machine as I could get, and spent a happy hour picking weeds and litter from the willows on the lower boundary out of the ditch bed, while admiring the snowdrops and deploring the evidence of rabbits (there are still no crocus to be seen in the bottom lawn.  Is it still too early for them, or are they being eaten?).

Spending time in the ditch bed confirmed my previous thought that we needed to cut back various overhanging branches that had sagged out from the straggly row of trees along the ditch.  I am still not entirely sure whether they are ours, or belong to the neighbouring farm (not the lettuce farm, but the one who were prepared to sell their land for a monster gravel pit).  Although untrustworthy in matters of mineral extraction, we seem to have a good though unspoken understanding about the trees along our mutual boundary, which is that if anything falls on to their field, they deal with it, and if it falls into our garden we do.  The willows are miserably unstable trees, and I wouldn't recommend them as the backdrop to a border if you were starting from scratch, but we weren't since they were already there when we arrived.  I think probably the best way to manage willows is as picturesque pollards.

The Systems Administrator required a little coaxing to come out into the garden with the electric pole saw, having already mapped out a day that did not include tree surgery, but obliged.  I was keen to press on, having started, so that I could clear away the wreckage, give the bed a final tidy and enjoy the snowdrops before they start going over.  They are just coming into their prime, with the first to open still fat and pristine, and more buds opening daily.  Of course it would have been better to have done all this two or three weeks ago, before the snowdrops were so far advanced, but we didn't.  Sometimes things just have to get done when you get around to doing them.

A lot of material came off the willows, and the odd, doomed ash and bulging hazels.  They took many, many trips to the bonfire and wood chopping area, and I still have't moved quite all of them. The cut stumps always look horribly raw immediately after lopping branches, but the freshly cut wood soon darkens, and come spring new growth will soften them.  The plants in the ditch bed will certainly be glad of the extra light.  There's shade, and then there's shade.  It's just as well the SA came out before lunch, because it sleeted in the afternoon.

I contemplated the mossy lawn and its crop of cyclamen and primroses as I collected willow prunings.  I think I have changed my mind, and will not move the cyclamen to the wood but leave them where they are and hope that the moss takes over completely from the grass in that corner. One of the best bits of Killerton, my favourite garden as a child, was a beech avenue carpeted with moss and cyclamen.  We don't run to an avenue, but the wild cherry and the three river birches are doing OK at promoting moss.  I have a nasty suspicion that the moss lawn is going to require weeding to keep it clear of herb Robert and cow parsley, and the wildflower whose name I don't know.  I saw a reference to it the other day with a photo in a gardening article which confirmed it was a geum, and was pleased I was right then promptly forgot its name again.

A Sarcocca which was never at all happy under the deep shade of the wild gean turns out to have leapt the fence, and established a little patch in the edge of the wood.  Did it seed itself, I wonder, or sucker?  I haven't found any elsewhere in the garden so it certainly isn't seeding widely.  The reason why I was peering over the fence was to investigate a multi-stemmed wild cherry that was leaning at a crazy angle, and the reason for this turned out to be that its root plate had lifted.  It must have either been hit by the birch as it fell, or caught in the same freak gust.  It needs to come down, since it looks daft as it is.  I rather have my eye on the gap for an Amelanchier.

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