back in the gunnera bed

I had been thinking of going up to London today, to catch the polar expedition photos at the Royal Gallery before they end, and the Zoffany exhibition at the RA, and maybe finish up with the RHS show in Vincent Square, which didn’t shut until 7pm and would have seen me through until after the watershed for the cheap trains.  Yesterday when it was so grey and cold that seemed like a good plan.  This morning, with the sun shining enticingly on the garden and ‘Taihaku’ glowing in all its snowy glory, it seemed a less attractive way to spend the day.  When I discovered I’d lost the stamped ticket from my previous trip to the Royal Gallery, that would have let me in free today, I gave up on the whole plan, and decided to push on with clearing the gunnera bed instead.  (There is no gunnera in the gunnera bed at the moment.  It died.  I have a rather sorry looking little replacement in a pot in the greenhouse that needs planting out).

'Taihaku' turned out to be absolutely humming with bees working the flowers, and as I admired it against a blue sky I was glad I'd taken the time to look at it.  By lunchtime I’d almost cleared the nettles from the area where the new deck is supposed to go, so I told the Systems Administrator that it was virtually ready, and that soon after lunch I’d be ready to hand the site over, suggesting hopefully that work could start tomorrow, or even this afternoon.  So far the position of the deck is marked by four alder posts out of the wood banged into the ground.  Alder is supposed to be resistant to rot when in contact with wet soil, and we are going to test this empirically by using it for the deck uprights.  The SA came and measured the distance apart of the posts, remarked that they were not square but it didn’t matter, and disappeared into the workshop.  I heard the sound of a circular saw, but no further progress materialised on the ground.

I advanced up the bed, digging out nettle roots and chiselling away at more of the yellow bamboo.  Parts of the bed have water lying on the surface despite the drought, other parts are stickily damp, and patches are quite dry.  I think the original clump of Phyllostachys nigra died of excessive water at the root, since while bamboo likes reliable moisture, it is not a bog plant.  It managed to spread before dying, so there is some black bamboo growing on drier ground, though not nearly so much as there is of the yellow sort.  I got the two rolls of galvanised lawn edging back out of the garage, as I am determined to keep going this time until I’ve got the yellow monster contained.

The nettle roots have unfortunately worked in between the roots of the tree that isn’t a swamp cypress in places, which has meant I have caused some damage to the tree in the course of extracting the nettles.  They have run into the bamboo a little, but haven’t yet had time to delve deep, and I think I’m managing to pull most of them out.  I discovered the red leaves of an ornamental rhubarb emerging from one especially prominent lump of nettle roots, so it’s a stroke of luck I didn’t get round to removing them earlier in the season, when the rhubarb was dormant and I might not have realised what it was.

The tree that isn’t a swamp cypress was bought and planted under the impression that it was one, and referred to as The swamp cypress for years.  However, as I looked at it, and at trees in public gardens that had labels on them, and young trees for sale at work, I became more and more convinced that it was not a swamp cypress, Taxodium distichum, at all, but a Metasequoia glyptostroboides, or dawn redwood.  I haven’t found telling the two apart as cut and dried as the tree books make it sound it ought to be.  The arrangement of the leaves is supposed to be the clincher, opposite pairs in the case of the redwood, alternate for the swamp cypress, but labelled trees I looked at in public gardens, and our tree, seemed to exhibit both, and the length of the leaves also seemed intermediate between the two descriptions.  Our tree developed a marked flare at the base of the trunk, said to be characteristic of Metasequoia, but Taxodium sometimes does that too.  Deciding whether the bark was spongier and redder than that of a different species without being able to compare the two side by side was tricky.  Every time we visited a garden that had either, or both, I rushed up to them, checked whether they were labelled, and examined for diagnostic clues, but there seemed to be a wide range of different forms across both species.  However, our tree does look more and more like a Metasequoia, and so has come to be called The tree that isn’t a swamp cypress.   I don’t especially mind it being a dawn redwood, since it is a good looking tree, and the story of how they came into cultivation in the west is quite romantic.  They were known from fossil records, and thought to be extinct, until a small colony was found growing in China in 1943, and identified as the extinct tree in 1948.  The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University collected seed, and the species entered western cultivation.  It is critically endangered in the wild, so it’s just as well there are specimens scattered over the gardens of the western world.  According to my Collins Tree Guide it roots very easily from cuttings, though I haven’t tried.  One giant conifer is enough for the garden.

At twenty to six there was a clap of thunder, and it began to rain, suddenly and quite hard.  I put my tools back in the garage, and asked the SA through the front door whether the rain had driven the chickens in, or whether the SA was stuck in the porch.  The letterbox flap opened, and the SA looked at me through the slot.  ‘They haven’t gone to bed.  I think they’re in your greenhouse’.  The next thunderclap was almost instantaneous with the lightning, and tripped the switch on the fusebox.  From the porch the SA could smell the ozone off the strike.  Then the storm passed, and the chickens went to bed.