The Light Fantastic

We recently had a tree surgeon sort out a pine that had got far too big, and was blocking much of the light from our conservatory and two of the three floors above it. The difference that the clearer view has made is a revelation. My desk is flooded with illumination during the middle of the day, so much so a couple of times last week that I had to adjust my screen and drop a Russian blind a couple of feet to avoid being blinded by the light (bugger off Springsteen).

It makes a difference in other ways - tomatoes that seemed destined to remain green forever have suddenly ripened. Our next door neighbour is delighted that the newly renovated woodwork on his bays has a chance to remain dry. We hope that a tiny but nagging occasional damp problem in one corner of our dining room will go for the same reason.

The main difference though is in the way it makes you feel. Light is health-giving, needed in the production of vitamin D, but more than that it lifts your mood. SADS (Seasonally Affected Disorder) got a lot of publicity a couple of years back, Monty Don I seem to recall suffering in the darker months. Here in semi-tropical Preston we can hope that the threat of the winter blues is a little diminished this year.

On Trees and Losing Them

Yesterday as we drove to our allotment we passed along a street where some fine old trees have just been cut down, trees with trunks a couple of feet in diameter. Our guess was that they had been removed because they were warping the pavement and trips and falls were filling the pockets of ambulance chasing lawyers. So the aspect of the area has been changed for the next several decades because of a fear of litigation. The street looks like someone given a razor haircut against their wishes.

Is it hypocrisy that one of the things we went to do on our plot was cut down a tree? In that case it was a pear, a substantial tree perhaps 20 years old, but that in our seven years there has only yielded one decent crop, in spite of much TLC - manure, sticky bands, pruning... Most of it is now in the allotment shed, one large bag brought home and put in our wood-store. That tree was also shading too much of our land, and our neighbours' land, and we had the foresight to plant a small cherry tree close by two years ago with the idea that the pear would go sooner or later.

Will the local authority plant replacements on that now bald street? Or will they think it too much effort (and cost, and future cost)? Their thinking about trees it seems is mainly what the possible dangers are, however unlikely: a few years back some other fine specimens, laurels of some sort I think, were removed from a park here because they were close to a children's play area, and the leaves contain a poison. After the felling it was pointed out that just to get a bit of a poorly tummy a child would need to eat several pounds of the leaves.

A Dead Summer and Dying Trees

Is it coincidence or causality? Over the last couple of horribly wet months we have lost a tree, an old fruitless fruit tree that one day we noticed was gradually tipping over; and last week our next door neighbours lost two thirds of a huge ash - both thirds making our garden, the first taking out a bit of fence and scaring the chickens, the second utterly destroying the roof and severely damaging one wall of a year-old shed. Amicable discussions ensued, a new shed will replace it and we trust a piece of fencing. A month back a silver birch two doors down had to be removed before it toppled.

I wonder if the sodden ground accelerated these losses? And if the run of four or five wet summers here caused the rot to set in? This is a lovely leafy area, but becoming less so as such trees are lost. We have planted a quince, Victoria plum and greengage, but they will take a while to become established, and many years before they have anything like the architectural impact of the ash and the birch.  Maybe they never will, as the fear must be that this weather-pattern has set in and the ground will be this way off and on for the foreseeable.

It's an ill wind, however. Ash may not be the hottest-burning wood, but you can just about use it green, and we have room to dry it out - our neighbour is very happy to leave us the use of the wood that fell into our garden. So more bloody wood chopping, but later more wonderful warmth and warm smells from the stove in the dining room.