These gooseberry bushes are old. Not perhaps as thorny and venerable as the ones that grew at my grandfather's Cheshire home, but in need of as much love and attention as his smallholding merited in the neglected decade of the Sixties. Formerly, his fruit, vegetables and chickens had kept his family and neighbours through a war that is now fading from living memory. That might have been one reason why I accepted these two as a gift; yet another rescue job.
The trick of renovation is to cut them back to the base.
Saturday 23 April 2011
Friday 1 April 2011
Apple of my eye
It was only a small tree. We uprooted it from the corner where the grapevine smothered it with its luxuriant tendrils of summer growth and the redcurrant bushes competed with it for water and nutrients. It took longer than I anticipated. Such things always do. First we dug a suitable hole, lined with well rotted manure, and then we heaved up the roots, with myself on tenterhooks lest we broke anything. Finally we bedded in our infirm apple, tamped it in, watered and hoped.
And the next season it was dotted with little white balls, like cotton where aphids lurking in woolly fluff on the branches were sucking its life from it. The sure sign of a sick tree or plant is always infestation. We do not spray in our household, we put on thin latex gloves and painstakingly rub the aphids out of existence. I do not take much pleasure in doing this.
And the next year, still no blossom. Murmurings and prognostications from the person who had sweated to move it. I pleaded for it. It seemed to have as much purpose as a rotary clothes line broken in pieces, or an old umbrella with twisted spokes. Our tree stood with scarecrow branches like truncated arms, a few leaves and an occasional ant. Clear of aphids now, in proximity to the best tree on the plot, like a barren parody.
Another spring came by. It bore three small yellow apples, all of which fell off.
And now at last, this spring, it is recovering and laden with blossom, It may be asymmetrical, but it is alive and ready to bear fruit. A tree can survive long. The oldest book of the Old Testament, Job, says: For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again and that its shoots will not cease. (Job 14:7)
It is still upsetting to see the evidence of those who took their saws or secateurs to my tree with such disregard. Cordoned apples and pears I can understand. I have seen cherries against walled gardens and espaliered peaches. These are all carefully trained, inspected and monitored. Nobody trained my tree. Yet it has recovered. I have hope for it.
And the next season it was dotted with little white balls, like cotton where aphids lurking in woolly fluff on the branches were sucking its life from it. The sure sign of a sick tree or plant is always infestation. We do not spray in our household, we put on thin latex gloves and painstakingly rub the aphids out of existence. I do not take much pleasure in doing this.
And the next year, still no blossom. Murmurings and prognostications from the person who had sweated to move it. I pleaded for it. It seemed to have as much purpose as a rotary clothes line broken in pieces, or an old umbrella with twisted spokes. Our tree stood with scarecrow branches like truncated arms, a few leaves and an occasional ant. Clear of aphids now, in proximity to the best tree on the plot, like a barren parody.
Another spring came by. It bore three small yellow apples, all of which fell off.
And now at last, this spring, it is recovering and laden with blossom, It may be asymmetrical, but it is alive and ready to bear fruit. A tree can survive long. The oldest book of the Old Testament, Job, says: For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again and that its shoots will not cease. (Job 14:7)
It is still upsetting to see the evidence of those who took their saws or secateurs to my tree with such disregard. Cordoned apples and pears I can understand. I have seen cherries against walled gardens and espaliered peaches. These are all carefully trained, inspected and monitored. Nobody trained my tree. Yet it has recovered. I have hope for it.
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