Felling the Trees

As druids, we are not going to like taking down trees, but for the last few days, four hard-working tree surgeons in lumberjack shirts (of course) have been working on our land. They were here to carry out the agreement we had to fell some trees and some heavy branches on other trees that had become a danger to traffic and to the windows of our house.

Watching the trees go was amazing though. The lads clambered high into the branches, right up above the eaves of the house, and took them down safely with ropes and the howl of their saws.

It is quite upsetting to see their scarred remains now at the edge on one small part of the garden, but there are some great positives. Firstly, light and sun are now able to come into the garden, something the land and plants have been longing for. Secondly, we still have almost fifty trees surrounding our land. Thirdly, we won't be liable if a limb comes down in the road after a gale. Fourthly, they won't be coming through our new extension windows, either! Fifthly (nearly finished) we have the most gigantic pile of logs, neatly sawed and under a tarp, waiting to be used in our lovely new wood burning stove. By the time we get it, they will have weathered nicely. And finally we have now got an interrupted view of the landscape. For a while, we sat in the late evening sun watching half a dozen red kites wheel in the sky, crying in their spine-chilling high-pitched wail.

Magic.

Beginning of (flaming) June

The 1^st of June

The first spell of dry, hot weather, and the hay harvest has begun, with every farmer in our area sharing equipment in order to get their hay safely in. Gino, of ice cream and rescue tractor fame,  was one of the first to get going. In the 10 acre field at the bottom of our paddocks, the hay was cut over a week ago. It lay, exposed to the warm sun for a day, and then, at around four-thirty one afternoon, with a flurry of shouts and tractor roars, the hay-making gang arrived, parking their van in the centre not far from where we were tilling our own soil. The first piece of machinery to arrive was shaped like a spiky Ferris wheel. This shook and sifted the cut grass into tall thin rows. The gang leader did a lot of shouting at this point; clearly he wanted the rows just how they should be. Once the Ferris wheel had done its job, the tractors arrived; one pulling the box-like machine that would suck the hay up and spit it out of high funnel; one pulling a massive, open-topped crate. The two aligned and moved slowly over the field, pouring a continual stream of hay into the crates. One by one, the crates were towed out of the field, replaced by new, empty ones, ready to be filled. 

Within two hours the field was shorn. They had finished well before the sun had set.  For the next week, while the sun has burned down on us here, the farmers have been sharing the work of a successful hay harvest. I remember that Julius Caesar, in his famous treatise on the Britains (as he found them...Celts, we were then, Celts, are who live round me now...) stated that...they have two harvests, one in midsummer, one in later summer...This is very likely the hay and corn harvests. Although, through the centuries, the methods of collection have changed, become more streamline, the need for a barn of hay has not. The cows still need their winter fodder.

The field now looks like a skinhead whose number one went a bit wrong – a thin and patchy layer of green on brown. Today the birds arrived, attracted in hundreds by the exposed invertebrates. The crows arrived first; murders of them. Then the birds of prey caught on. Despite the food being a very scant feast, they wanted a piece of the action. Red kites and buzzards are much bigger than crows, but the crows attacked with venom; cawing loudly, flapping blackly and nose-diving on the larger birds until they gave up and soared away like the kings of the high sky that they are, until their wheeling cry could barely be heard. Then the gulls arrived. They were just as keen to share the meal, and, it seemed, a little more determined than the birds of prey. But the crows were not going to be beaten by a load of fisher-birds. They worked together, using our ash tree as a watchtower and runway, rising in squads into the air and attacking the gulls with what seemed like relish and resolve. Caws and shrieks filled the air.

Finally, there seemed to be a sort of truce. The field rises in the centre, a little hill. The gulls settled on the far side of the rise; the crows on the near side. It reminded me of a chess board. Jim used to teach the children to play chess by telling them to think of the board as a battleground that rose in the centre, so that the Grand old Duke York’s men might march up and down. Now, here were the black crows and the white gulls, eying each other in the lull of battle as they tackled the one-day  growth of field stubble.

The last three days have been incredibly hot; a true start to flaming June. We’ve had to layer on the sunblock as we worked. Our first vegetable plot is finished; a motley collection of seeds and seedlings lie in tidy rows. We’re so proud of it. We gaze on it like a mother on her sleeping baby and water it like it is suckling milk. Now we’ve started on the polytunnel, marking out the 4 by 8 metre site and lifting the turf. The kites are still squealing and soaring  above us in a glass-blue sky.

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End of May

By the middle of May, a flurry of visitors started arriving. First were Jill and Ostara. Jill lives near Llandeilo, so she’s practically a neighbour. She gave us our first lesson on the country network; she knew so many people around our neck of the woods, including the lady who runs the gardening club and the people who run workshops in St Dogmaels, just outside Cardigan. Jill and Ostara have promised to come to a writing workshop, if I hold one there. Austin has popped in to see us already and told us all about his life before retiring to Rhydlewis.

We spent a wonderful day with Jill, on the 26th, first seeing her gorgeous cottage in Trap, right in the shadow of the castle, and then motoring off to wander round the Botanical Gardens of Wales in rapture. This is well worth a visit; it’s a little mini Eden Project, with a tropical house house and a non-tropical ‘Mediterranean house’ although there are plants there from every temperate band of warm country around the world. But for me, the ‘double walled garden’ was the biggest treat; I loved the layout of the vegetable plots and the selection of plants that might actually grow in our garden, too. Jill is an authority on dogs; she could tell us everything we needed to know about them while we walked her own German Shepherd and little labrador around her garden. We'll be back for further help when we finally decide to get a poochie!

Ana and Branwen, coming a little further from the Gower, arrived a few days later. Branwen seemed particularly enchanted by the cottage, she stepped into it and kept repeating...it’s lovely, oh, it’s lovely! The following Saturday, Gary and Gail came for lunch. They were motoring up to Aberystwyth with one of their two girls (Jolie) and Jolie’s friend, Amber, to holiday with Gail’s entire family; 18 of them on one caravan park. It was so good to see them again, and while she was further north, she wrote me a fabulous letter which took me an entire pot of coffee to read...thanks so much Gail. 

On Sunday, Sue and Nick travelled up from Bristol and it was really good to see them, especially as I owed Sue a lot of money for the holiday we’re having in July...Sorrento here we come! This was a memorable occasion because it was the first time w'ed eaten al fresco, in a garden loaded with sunlight. The lawn is a little sloping though, and we made sure the visitors had the least wonky chairs...it also mean they had the delightful surprise of watching me tip my chair over and land sprawling of the ground.

Sadly our first overnight visitors were unable to make it; my cousins Glenys and Geoff, were going to stop on the way to the Holyhead ferry, but they are going through the dreadful trauma of selling their house...I do know how they feel, having just experienced what lawyers and vendees can do to you... But we are a good halfway house for such a journey from Bristol; so take note of that! I’m please to say that everyone who has seen Rhoshill are almost (almost!) as enchanted as Branwen, and tell us we’ve made a good choice. Well, we know that anyway.

Be warned if you pop in on the hop; Rosie and Ludwig and Jim's relations Tom and Margaret both left things behind...a pullover and a dog bowl respectively. 

And thanks to Lew and Maggie, who put us up when we came back to Bristol for a druid meeting. It was good to see them, and compare cottage garden notes.