Dormant trees - winter pruning

 Yesterday afternoon it did not rain.  It was on with the welly boots and on to the soggy back lawn to prune the apple trees.  Before venturing out I consulted both our organic gardening reference books which gave good general advice on pruning which I will not repeat here.  

What did strike me was the instruction to remove new growth at the tips by up to a third.  I baulked at this, so for the first few minutes I walked around the Discovery removing crossing branches and branches growing so low down that last season the fruit nestled in the grass.  I then gave it quite a conservative tip prune.

Next it was the turn of Scotch Bridget.   It took five years to bear fruit and I was formerly very reluctant to touch it.  But now that I knew all was well I could afford to take off some very low branches and some tips.  Apples put on new growth in one year and form fruit buds the next year so in effect I was getting the trees ready for 2022.

As I reflected on the 'thirds' principle.  I wondered what in what other areas it might apply.

And I thought with sadness of the untended trees we 'forage' from in the fields and hedgerows around us which would respond so well to much more drastic attention than this.  

Sweet Peas and some other things under glass

I decided to post some hopeful gardening signs during lockdown so am beginning with the anticipated beauty of sweet peas.

This year is our (my husband's) first attempt at growing sweet peas in the north west.  We bought our packet of semi-dwarf (container) sweet peas at the local garden centre and he sowed them in proper seed compost in the greenhouse.  This was the closest we have to the recommended October sowing in a cold frame.  Most of them are now up and under sheets of glass recycled from old fridge shelves and other sources.

I am amazed, although I should not be, that they germinated successfully and look so strong.  We even found that there were more in the packet than anticipated which leaves us extra for a spring sowing in March/April.  

Joining them in the cleared greenhouse is our culinary herb container, thyme and mint, our 'rescue' jasmine which has been root pruned and regenerated and our latest experiment - a verbena which grew from a wildflower seed mix up through the rhododendron in the front hedge.  I rather roughly extracted this and replanted it in a pot.  It will die down eventually, I will cut it back and hope to see it shoot again.

  

From 'pets' to wildlife

There was a moment this summer when our blackbird population reverted from 'pets' to wildlife.  No more chucking crumbs, summoning whistles, endearments and baby names.  By their actions they proved to be what they are, wild birds with an appetite for fruit.

Of course we knew this was true of the soft fruit which was why we annually netted the blueberry, raspberries and blackcurrants and moved the gooseberry in its big pot closer to the house, where unfortunately it nearly succumbed to gooseberry sawfly.  Sawfly larvae were relatively easy to deal with, picked off by hand and thrown over the hedge.  Apple trees needed nets.

This had never happened on such a scale before.  We had had the occasional peck at our 'Discovery' a beautiful red early ripening apple.  Now it was more like an onslaught. And once ripe apples have been pecked it is not long before the damaged fruit starts to brown and rot.

So Discovery, to the amusement of our neighbours, was swathed in net curtains, weighted down at the edges, clipped together with clothes pegs while the lawn beneath them grew long and a hiding place for frogs.

We picked at the end of August.  They do not store so we ate them week by week or gave them away.  The odd pecked apple which had evaded my checking went into apple and blackberry muffins.

We left the Scotch Bridget until the end of September.  We had waited five years for the full cropping of this lovely apple which is a dual purpose cooker and eater.  Foiled on their attempts on Discovery the blackbirds unexpectedly went for this one too hence the nets which went up a little later but stayed up for over a month.  

Now both nets are stored away.  The Scotch Bridget, which may last until November is stored in the pantry in stacks of supermarket cardboard trays.  My husband has cut the long grass with hand shears and the frogs, I presume have gone to hide and hibernate.  The blackbirds have returned to the lawn for worms.

Polyanthus in the right spaces

We are now on smaller scale gardening activities in our city's autumn lockdown 2020.  Plants that had been shoved in (by me), plants that had grown beyond limits, plants that were once acceptable as ground cover but uninspiring - all these were evaluated in September and cut back, moved or thrown away.  The irises from my family went to a sunny spot in the back border where they should both 'bake'  and flower in future years.  A rather nice lily now has an unimpeded space of its own to the approbation of the donor; the big white daisies that remind me of our childhood have been split.  A fuchsia 'Tom Thumb' propagated by my husband has been moved out from the clutches of our mint and a new one, 'Genii' from the local garden centre is doing nicely in a sheltered partly sunny spot.  

Then one of the free advertorial magazines came through the door with an article on planting a winter tub.  We went to the local garden centre again and I purchased a bag of daffodil bulbs and three polyanthus.

In years past I would have rescued polyanthus, as when we bought three trays for 30p from a local superstore.  At times I have split our own, or driven to one of the larger garden centres and spent money.  On my 60th we went to our distant cousins' place out by Tarleton, now sold and demolished, and bought cyclamen and hellebores for winter tubs.    Those days have gone.

I put two polyanthus in the gaps left by the daisies.  There is space around them and the hellebores and I added some small daffodil bulbs.  I dug up two white heathers -  offshoots of a rescue plant, some vinca -  it was here when we arrived  -  and moved a cyclamen corm.   As instructed by the article I also sunk some daffodil bulbs under the planting for spring.

My tub does not look like the picture.  It has no conifers, skimmia or pansies from the recommended list.  It does not resemble anything my husband would have put together.  However, he has kindly said it looks fine.  Plants will grow and then we will have two more heathers, vinca that can re-join the rest under the front hedge, and a red polyanthus that can be planted back into the bed.

Glade

 The pandemic restrictions have affected us, here on the avenue, but thankfully not as badly as they could have done.  We have taken healthy walks, delivered cake to friends and neighbours, prayed more, cooked more and kept in touch with family and church by phone and electronic media.  

The back garden has seen the benefit of new coats of paint on our fence, our shed and the home made planters, all in a tasteful shade of darker brown.

Finally we turned our attention to our boundary hedge.  The time had come to reduce the height of the hawthorn, holly and privet.  Why stop there, we thought, the time had also come to remove the Leyland Cypresses that had been planted along our boundary to shield us from the park.  

Once we examined these we discovered some interesting features.  The cypresses had been pruned before but that had not stopped parts of the trees from dying.  They had grown into and distorted the hedge. They had risen to such a height that they blocked the early morning sunlight.  They were covered in ivy, which, unchecked, was also strangling the hedge.  The hedge that had looked so strong and green from our side was actually a mess and needed to come down to a height of around seven feet.  With the consent of our neighbours we set about it. 

So far my husband has demolished four trees.  We have two to go.  Already the area behind our hedge, once a jungle, is now a glade.  Sunlight glances on the hazel bushes.  Holly that was once long and straggly is beginning to grow again. The hawthorn will regenerate and the evergreen logs we have left in place will become a bug haven as they decompose.  Everything changed as it was opened up - we just have to keep it that way.

'the hermit thrush'

Robert Browning, under a Mediterranean sky, recalled an English thrush with its 'first fine careless rapture!'  I now turn to the song of the North American hermit thrush in T S Eliot's The Waste Land.  In Section V 'What the Thunder said' the poet, domiciled in post-World War One London, longs for the sound of water in a desolate land, 'Here is no water but only rock'.  He remembers the song of the hermit thrush:

"But sound of water over rock
Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water..."

In his notes to the poem Eliot tells us that he has heard the thrush himself, cites the Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America  - 'purity of tone and exquisite modulation...' and notes that 'Its water dripping song is justly celebrated'

Here is Eliot the scholar, citing his references and making sure of the facts; here is Eliot the poet responding to a memory of birdsong and water in a dry and cracked internal landscape.

"That's the wise thrush..."

A friend has decided that this season of 'lockdown' is the time for poetry and is compiling and emailing poems to our library's Poetry Circle and others week by week.  My poem comes from the compilation made during World War Two by the late Field Marshall A P Wavell containing the poems he had learned by heart.  Poetry sustained him on campaign from India to North Africa.

In my childhood the fashion for getting poetry by heart was declining.  This was not so for earlier generations and indeed I have heard a sufferer from dementia, in her eighties, recite an entire narrative poem, the 'Three Jolly Farmers' by heart.

Verses especially lyric poetry, canticles and hymns tend to stick if I have sung them.  Being set to music aids recall.  However the poem by Robert Browning Home Thoughts, From Abroad is one that I tried to commit to memory in primary school and seems appropriate for this period of history.  Here, close to our back garden we have our own 'wise thrush'.  He perches high up in the birch trees, situated above the warring blackbirds in the park and is the first to start the dawn chorus.  I have heard him at 4.00 am or earlier, before the first light of dawn.  He is also the last to conclude in the evening.  

Perhaps in other springs I would have been annoyed to have been woken so early, but now I am consoled by birdsong, as Browning, in self-imposed exile in Italy was consoled by the memory of an English spring.

Slow Gardening

In these times I am grateful for our garden and as long as the sunshine lasts I shall be out there practising slow gardening.  I noticed as we went on our exercise walk yesterday that people had mowed their front lawns, as my husband has out back.  Once you have cut the grass - what next?

On Monday I got out our seed box and we worked out what needed to wait until the weather warmed up.  On our windowsill under a cover we have broad beans.  These we sowed last week and they are germinating.  Every morning we look to see if another little green bump is preceding an emerging shoot.

I thought I would do salad in our salad crib.  D our neighbour very kindly passed over some more surplus plastic from his conservatory roof before this emergency started.  So under this cover have gone radish, garlic chives, lettuce Little Gem and our own rocket.  I found that I had slowed down and was taking more care.  I wore gloves.  (This is unusual for me because formerly I loved to get my hands in the soil.) I read the instructions and scattered more thinly than before (Usually I am quite quick and maybe a little over-generous with amounts.)  Then my husband watered and I covered with D's plastic.  

Into the shed to sow some old seed we were given (Aquilegia) from 2016.  This grows in our borders anyway but worth a try.  I shall not be putting it in the freezer first as our shed gets cold when the sun goes down.  

And that is it for today's tasks.  Tomorrow  I shall feed all our fruit bushes and our apple trees, again following the instructions to the letter.  And when this is over D will have the rhubarb I promised him last year, over the fence.

Fallen Trees

This first week in March has been cold and sunny without the heavy, incessant rain we have suffered for a long time.  So time to pull on the trainers and go for a walk.  Two walks of an hour's duration in different places led me to reflect on fallen trees.

Rain has loosened the roots of many trees along the hillsides and footpaths of our neighbourhood and it was instructive to see how they fell.  In managed woodland, such as this afternoon's ramble, trees are hauled off the paths and laid neatly down, or piled up in bug havens.  Pink spots indicated trees deemed a risk in need of felling.  Moss takes hold on fallen trunks making them look like green pillars.   Fungus flourishes, one such a bright red that I mistook it for a discarded crisp packet. 

Before the winter storms began the volunteers had shored up the banks of the stream with stout timbers and replaced all the bridges, of which there are quite a few.  Part of the charm of this walk is following the bends and criss-crossing the little bridges.  At times it felt like some former landscaped estate, though without the omnipresent rhododendrons.  

Our first walk this week provided the contrast.  We passed under an 'echoey' railway bridge, the kind we loved as children, decorated with several graffiti, one with eyes, warning us to 'look behind you'.  Behind us was the managed area where volunteers 'balsam bash', hold communal picnics by the football pitches and fund raise.  In front was an area under local authority inspection but friendless.  

We passed at a distance, three persons in hi-vis jackets, one with a clipboard taking notes.  All three of the bridges that led across to the old golf course were beginning to rot and had been boarded up on both sides. The watercourse, a gentle stream at most times of the year was eroding the banks and had taken the sandy soil leaving little coves where tree roots dangled - another storm and no doubt they will succumb.  Some trees had already fallen across the water and right at the end of the walk before we retraced our steps the largest one we encountered was across the path and we ducked to get under. 

On the way back I noticed how many of the crowns of the mature trees were beginning to die.  

Ten Thousand Steps

It was time to replace the battery in the pedometer (I am low-tech) in readiness for a New Year's Resolution - to walk ten thousand steps.  I'm not sure I can achieve this every day but so far we have managed it on the principle of extending existing errands such as the walk to the Post Office, and revisiting familiar routes that take us through the landscape of lowland Lancashire; wet woodlands, ponds with boardwalks and wildfowl, small rivers with sandy banks sometimes eroding and yesterday what looked like a stone Victorian ruined walled garden hidden in beech woodlands.   

I hope I can keep this up.   Fuelled by jelly babies against hypos and checking my blood glucose when I feel I am losing energy I tackle slow inclines through cloughs and copses, and long homeward roads dissecting deserted business parks.

Back by sunset.  Time for tea and home-made (reduced sugar) cake.