Monthly Archives: March 2011

Away Awhile

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I’m going away for a few day to walk in a circle.  It’s quite a big circle otherwise I needn’t leave the warm confines  of the greenhouse.  It’s a 150 miles of circle.  It starts in Scarborough and finishes in …. well, I would hope you can guess.
When I planned the walk back in December, it seemed a jolly exciting and challenging prospect.   Now it just seems a jolly tiring and challenging prospect.
The walk is called the Cleveland Way, with an extra 50 mile bit, The Tabular Hills Walk, tacked on.
I first saw this public information film about the ‘Way, when I was a young kid in the early 70′s.  For some reason it really stuck with me; all that talk of Vikings and Witches I suppose.  (When I recently discovered it on YouTube, I found  I even remembered certain lines of the script .  Although I’ve never literally needed “a swift horse to York”, it is a phrase I can’t help but use quite often.  Goodness only knows what “the geography of peace” means however).
Years later as a young lad of 18, I hitchhiked from my home in Hertfordshire to Yorkshire in order to walk it.  Now I’m off to walk it again.  Not sure why.  Clutching at the past?  Because it’s there?  Because I still can?  Because I want to?  All of those I guess.
I’ll be back in ten days or so, I expect.  Toodle pip.

Margaret’s Lamb

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The other day (after my elevenses at ten o’clock), I stepped out of the greenhouse and looked to my left; this was what I saw:

These are hoggetts; one year old lambs.  They are the brothers and sisters of the baby lambs currently being born up on the farm. And they are ready for slaughter.  Indeed six are going to the abattoir this week.

I really like having Margaret’s sheep in the neighbouring fields.  They afford me a little company.  In a few weeks time, her cows will be let out from the sheds where they have spent the winter.  They will then be my summer companions, eating grass, mooing loudly, poohing copiously and staring at me.  Cows spend a lot of their day staring.  That’s OK; I just stare back. They soon get bored.   In the meantime it’s just me and the sheep.
One (the only?) advantage of supermarket meat is it’s anonymity.  You don’t even have to think of the cellophane wrapped lump as animal.  Just product.  You don’t get that anonymity with Margaret’s lambs.  At first, I was distinctly uncomfortable about eating animals that  I had known in life. I saw the above lambs last year shortly after they were born.  I have since watched them growing up.  But as I do eat meat it seems right that I should eat meat whose provenance is absolutely known to me, whose food miles are only those to and from the local abattoir and the buying of which helps keep our local farmer, Margaret, in business.  And it’s damn fine lamb too.  Damn fine.  In my opinion autumn lamb is far superior to spring lamb; the animals have been out to pasture and spent some months eating grass.  This gives a far better flavour. And better still (if you can get it) is hoggett.
Nevertheless, it is very sad to know an animal that is going to be slaughtered.  I have to tell myself that Margaret wouldn’t have bred them in the first place if she wasn’t going to sell them as meat.  She wouldn’t have spent sleepless nights during the lambing season helping them be born.   And fretting.  And they wouldn’t have spent time in the fields about the Priory keeping me company.  They’ve had a pretty fine life really.  If short.
But I do wish that particular lamb would stop looking at me like that. He doesn’t know, does he?

Suckerin’ Succotash

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I spent yesterday taking the suckers off of alders and willow.  It’s a job that takes up a great deal of time, but I finally tackled the last of this sucker-fest over in the north-east corner of the garden. It’s an  area of the grounds  that is relatively untouched.  The flower meadow ends here where it runs into a tangle of bramble and nettle, teazle and thistle surrounding an old solitary willow.  There is also a wide shallow extension of the east pond that mallard, moorhen and heron frequent.  This is ringed by alder and more willow and, having been dredged two years ago, it is beginning to be colonised by reed mace (known to me in my childhood as bullrush), marsh marigold and greater spearwort.  The latter was introduced by me and I’ve got my beady eye on it.  It is invasive  and I  don’t want it to take over completely.  I suspect though it’ll do what it wants.
This is  arguably the wildest bit of the garden and whilst I wish it to remain a haven for the creatures and plants that thrive here, I’d also like it to look a little less, well, neglected.
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The shallow pond – you can see suckering alders on the far bank
We’ve had several alders taken down in the past couple of years (and more were felled during the-years-of-neglect) and each year, where the stumps remain,  a forest of suckers emerge.  In addition  the standing alders also sucker.  Bit of a head scratcher as to what to do about them.  They can look attractive:

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Suckers at the base of the alders on the east pond.  Aug 2009

but I worry about them getting too big and so remove them each year.  There’s approximately 15 alders plus a similar number of  stumps.  In addition there are probably a dozen willow stumps.   So, a lot of suckers.

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Before

Quite pleasing to de-sucker an alder;

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.

After.  (I do like a before and after shot.  There’ll be another one along in a moment)

but it’s just another time-consuming job;

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though satisfyingly it produces a huge amount of material for a bonfire.
I didn’t want to remove all the suckers in the garden and generally over in this quiet corner, I’ve let them be.  For some time now I’ve wanted to plant a pleached lime or hornbeam avenue at the Priory – hopefully one day I shall.  I’m fascinated by the gnarled and contorted, swollen stems and branches of regularly  pollarded trees.  In winter, when all is empty and forlorn, there is a nascent energy to them; a pent-up potential which is all too visible.  I love that.  Given that the pleached avenue isn’t imminent and given that I’ve got all this alder and willow, I thought I’d try pollarding some of them.  I’d like to have battalions of clenched fists, raised  in mute fury at a washed out, oblivious sky.  There should be more angry clenched fists in gardens,  I think.  Calming.
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Before

With this in mind, I thought I would take out the majority of the suckers from this old willow stump (above) whilst allowing some of the stronger stems  to grow.  It ended up looking like this:

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After (told you).
If I were to cut some willow-withies (you will never know how much satisfaction being able to use that word has given me), I could make a cage out of this.  Or a Wicker Man.  Stick Edward Woodward in it.  Give me someone to talk at.  I wouldn’t burn him but he wouldn’t be able to hurry away like the people from the village do when I try to talk at them.  Spouting their preposterous excuses.

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I rather liked the effect of the willow cage, so I followed the same process with an alder stump.  I could cage one large or several smaller people in this one.  Though I probably shan’t.  Instead, I’ll now leave these stems  to grow,  removing any new suckers from the base.  Then, next winter I’ll remove all the side branches again and keep it to the same height.  In time the stems should thicken and the heads swell.
Not sure whether it’ll work or just look pants.  If the latter, we’ll say no more about it and I’ll quietly fetch my bow saw.  No need to ever mention again an idle idea that ended up just looking rubbish. We’ll just keep schtum, OK?

Oak Killer

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Despite banging on about how much I love oaks, I plan to kill one.
The Priory oaks add an enormous amount of structure, permanence and sheer weight to the beauty of the estate.  Rather like shrubs can do in an herbaceous border,  I suppose.  There are other big trees here; enormous ash trees (including this one – possibly the largest ash I’ve ever known)
Those horizontal branches are huge.
A pipe band and drum could march along them – almost

weeping willows,

The largest of the six weeping willows that sit on the west pond

alders

One of  the alders.  There’s well over a dozen

and pines that by any measure are big.

The Priory pines poking out of the wood (well copse really) up on the drive.  Dec 2009

But it is the oaks that I notice and gaze at and think about the most.  They are everywhere you look.  There are dozens upon dozens (possibly hundreds) in the surrounding fields,

Some of Margaret’s oaks.   Feb 2009
hedge boundaries,
And some more.   Dec 2009

along the river, in Margaret’s wood.  And when they die their presence still lingers like, well like the tales of the Priory ghost.

In the garden, by the east pond, there is the stump of an oak  (a monster oak) that was felled  long, long before I started work here. (It may have been the storm of ’87 that did the deed).  And when I walk past, I am often aware of it not being there; even though I never knew it.  I miss a tree I never saw.
The oak stump on the east lawn
Last year, up on the long drive leading up to the road, we had to fell an oak.  The drive is a public right of way and the oak’s main trunk was badly rotten and leaning at an alarming angle.  A proper man came and did  the deed.  Whilst I have a chainsaw certificate (and indeed a chainsaw) and rather fetching chainsaw trousers (field grey with black trim – possibly a bit too Wehrmacht actually), I only tend to fell trees that I feel confident in handling.  So, knee height ones generally.

Unless you’re trapped under a boulder in a canyon and the loss of a limb might be of benefit, you really ought to wear protective clothing when using a chainsaw.  There was a young lad on the forestry course I did a few years back.  He was a nice enough chap but (and let’s cut to the chase)  a bit thick.  Has to be said.  Whilst we were clearing an area of scrub, he rested a tree limb on his thigh (yikes) in order to cut it with his chainsaw (double yikes).  Needless to say the chainsaw slipped (triple yikes).  Luckily he was wearing protective trousers (phew).  The immensely strong fibres in the trouser material were ripped out by the saw’s chain and effectively clogged  it to a halt.  The tutor (the rather apt Mr Pollard) was obviously very relieved that the brainless-one wasn’t injured, though couldn’t hide his frustration that a £120 pair of trousers were destroyed.

I am now going to have another oak felled.  I’ve ummed and ahhed over this  particular tree for nigh on three years.  I’ve stood and studied and scratched my head.  And my chin.  I’ve studied it from every angle and at every season.  And sadly I think it has to come down.  Here’s a photo of it:

It’s the central one.  Not huge but of an age.  The main trunk splits and splits again.  It is too close to the very lovely oak to the right of it.  The latter needs space to grow; to fill out and the former is growing up through its crown.  Where they meet they are both shedding branches.   It’s a tough call.  Who wants to cut down a mature oak?  Not I.   But I think I’ve made the right decision.  Though it is, of course, an anxious one.

More Freeloaders

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The light on Friday was again gorgeous and warm.  For the first time in months, I was able to work in just a short-sleeved shirt.  And trousers.

Sunlight playing through the willows on the west pond

During my breaks from mowing the east lawn,

A corner of the east lawn with the rock border and greenhouse beyond
I surreptitiously slipped into the laundry room at the back of the Priory.  From here (with flask of Earl Grey and Boost-bar to hand), through an open window and being very quiet, I kept a beady eye on who was visiting the bird feeders.
As always – Charles.  Stuffing himself on very expensive bird food.  He’s pretty much moved into the garden and lives off the scatterings made by other birds from our two seed feeders and two nut feeders.  What with his scratching about, he makes an awful  mess of the lawn.  I’ve had to fix two unlovely plastic trays under the seed feeders to limit how much food  drops on to the ground below.  Charles was furious.
I’ve become rather fond of Charles.  If I startle him (easily done), he sprints off at speed like a soft lad velociraptor.  He rarely flies.  Maybe he’s getting a  little too heavy.  Too much fine dining.  During the recent pheasant shooting season when the surrounding fields were awash with Barbour, tweed and spaniel, I would silently yell at him to stay within its safe confines.  Beyond the Priory’s fencing and hedges was bloody  pheasant slaughter.
The feeders have been specially devised to trap Blue Tits.  And jolly successful they are too!  Whilst the Tits  can get in easily enough, once  they have eaten their full they are too fat to fly out again (see the two above).  They are kept in these fattening cages* for several days until they  have reached a desired plumpness.  Skewered onto satay sticks and lightly flamed over charcoal (no need to pluck or bone) they are served with a chilli-peanut sauce.  Very, very tasty.  And delightfully crunchy.**

In the above picture I’ve managed to capture a Long-tailed Tit.  Another one has smelt a rat and prepares to fly off (before he gets too fat),

leaving his disconsolate and frightened chubby friend behind.  He needn’t be frightened.  Long-tailed Tits (as everyone  knows)  have an unpleasant fishy flavour and do not make good eating.  He will be released from the fattening cage.  It is only Blue Tits that I’m after.  And of course Great Tits – if I can get them.

Great Tits obviously have more meat to them than Blue Tits (and a richer, more intense flavour) but they are a  cannier quarry.  Above, one is eyeing the trap with suspicion,

but sensing danger flies off.  Damn.

Later, however, unable to resist the free grub, he’s back.  Got him.  Happy days!

A regular visitor is this Great Spotted Woodpecker – though sadly he is too big to enter the fattening cage.  I shall need to build a bigger woodpecker fattening cage.  Wonder what they taste like?

Goldfinches,

Nuthatches,

and Robins are all regular visitors (and easily caught) but are of no culinary interest.  Shame.  Ooh, look.  I’ve caught another Blue Tit.
*  Patent pending
**  The Editorial Staff at theanxiousgardener.blogspot.com would like to stress that we do not condone the trapping, fattening and eating of titmice (or indeed any British garden birds). Furthermore we suspect such practice may be illegal.