Julia Chalkley

Tree pruning… part 1 of 100

Part of the orchard in the community wood

I got persuaded to take part in a tree pruning course in the community wood last Sunday. It was chilly and threatening to rain, so I could have happily stayed home, but out I went. I’m glad I did. The course tutor, Dr Anna Baldwin, had a great teaching manner; enthusiastic, knowledgeable, took questions as a priority. She rated our little orchard as a seven out of ten – considering it’s been sporadically looked after by volunteers, that’s not a bad score.

The orchard was the result of people asking the wood’s donor what he wanted for his 90th birthday. He told people not to buy a present for him, but to buy a fruit tree for the wood. He died five years later, but his presence lives on in the wood and the trees, and in our memory of him. I still remember reading the interview with him when his house was flooded. “The river runs deeper when it rains,” he’d said. “I can’t stop that, so I tiled the ground floor of the house, because carpet just gets ruined. I put the furniture up on bricks, open the front door and the back door and let the river flow through the house until the river subsides.”

The trees he asked to be planted are going strong a decade later, though they need some serious work. Some of the quince trees are sprouting pear shoots from the base, the muntjac are eating the apple tree bark and all of the trees are in serious need of pruning. We formed three pairs, each pair taking on a tree. First, twenty minutes walk around to consider the shape and any problems we could see. Then cutting, standing back, reconsidering and cutting again. We were told to aim for taking off 20% of the branches each year, and to make a separate pile of cuttings for each tree to make it clear how much we’d cut. Good idea, as it soon adds up. And before anyone says the whole tree will be shaved to a stump within five years, the tree responds to a cut by growing even more shoots.

By the end of the day, we’d pruned eight trees and had an idea of how much we had yet to do. For a start, they have the same problem as us – most of the labels have either dropped off or are bleached blank. In winter, that means that we’re relying on bark and growth characteristics. Pity the pair who pruned a tree to perfection, only to find they’d pruned a plum tree. Hard-stone fruit like plum should be pruned between mid-summer and early autumn. Whoops.

Two of us went back to the orchard yesterday to finish the job of cutting all the tree ties off before they strangled the trees. We put as much protective mesh around the trunks as we had mesh for, to save them from the deer. By the end of the year, I hope we can map the orchard, identify the trees (even just as “apple”, “pear” and “plum” if not the cultivar) and get some idea of how much pruning we want to do. And whatever we intend to do in the community wood, I need to tackle our own trees just as much. The one small comfort I have is that Dr Baldwin tells me that cider apple trees do not need pruning. That’s a third of the orchard done, then.

It’s been fun to work with a team again, and this time I’m working with a team that’s turned up because each person’s keen on the task rather than paid by the hour. This is a task that won’t finish for as long as the wood remains in community trust; these trees will (I hope) outlive me by a century.

Of apples and pears

Perry pears. One bite and your mouth’s dry all day.

Haven’t posted for nearly two weeks. It would have been dull. For most of that time, we have been watching paint dry. Still painting the living room – and of course, filling in the cracks and the gaps between skirting board and wall, sanding down the filler, covering the elegant green blobs on the nice white ceiling, fixing the curtain pole that has repeatedly applied for a divorce from the wall…

We took down the Christmas decorations on January 5th like good people, and went out to wassail the apple trees. It’s an old ritual, with various formulae around the country, but the basics are the same. Make a loud noise to scare off evil spirits, choose an apple tree in the orchard, politely entreat the tree and all its colleagues nearby to provide a good harvest next year, pour cider around its roots and put toasted bread into its branches.

We went to an organised wassail some years ago. The loud noise was a shotgun blasted up into the air (away from all buildings or attendees), each person hung a square of toast in the branches and the head wassailer poured a generous dollop of last year’s cider in a circle around its roots (and then the rest of the gallon into a wooden bowl). His address to the tree was as follows;

“Old apple tree, we wassail thee, and hope that you will bear… Hatfuls and capfuls, three bushel bagfuls, and a little heap under the stairs!”

It was everyone’s job to pass the bowl around and help to empty it. It’s the kind of ceremony that wouldn’t have been open to the public over the last year or two, but we have kept up the tradition ourselves. Last year, I skipped the poem and gave the trees the kind of ‘Pull yourselves together’ talk that would have sent my staff running to their union rep in tears. The apple trees let us know they were offended – for the third year running, we had a poor harvest and the few apples that did ripen disappeared over a few days. Birds, we think. This year, it was a frosty evening and we chose a tree that hadn’t had our attention recently and gave it the wassail poem and patted its trunk before running back to the comfort of the stove.

It won’t end there. We will trim the branches and clear the grass from the roots, spray the leaves if we have another attack of whatever tiny pest has eaten the leaves of the nearby maple to lace over the last three years. We don’t usually spray pesticides, but even a good dose of soapy water might do the trick; it’ll be worth spraying half the trees with soap, two with pesticide and leave the rest to judge the effects.

We’ve been enjoying our cider and perry this winter, and we’re keen to pick up where we left off two years ago. Our perry pear trees are starting to produce crops of pears, and the cider trees we planted a decade ago were doing well until recently.

The propagator is set up, with pots of seed compost. Plugged in and warming up. It’s set to be frosty again tonight and the thought of planting the first pepper seeds tomorrow is a comfort. However bad the previous year’s harvest, I never stop hoping that this year we’ll be picking our own peppers and courgettes and aubergines. The first step is taken tomorrow, when I plant seeds with names like ‘Yellow Monster’, ‘King of the North’ and ‘Wicked Witch’.

Monster and King are from the Real Seeds Company. Their seeds come from heritage plants, bred by amateur or professional gardeners or handed down by grandparents from plants that have succeeded in their gardens. They have varieties like True Siberian and Sutherland kale (bred to withstand snow and ice), Asturian Tree Cabbage (grows to about six foot tall with kale at its top) and Cherokee Trail of Tears, a black bean said to have been taken across America by the Cherokees evicted from their native lands. They all have stories attached.

The Wicked Witch chillies also have a story, though they aren’t from the Real Seeds catalogue. There used to be a farmers’ market every month in a nearby village hall. The last time we attended, there was a plant stall, and the stallholder had some small chilli plants labelled ‘Wicked Witch’. I bought two of them, and asked about the name. Apparently, they grew on the plot next to theirs in the allotments, and the plot owner offered them a plant. A week later, they had obviously done something offensive – they never discovered what – and the plot owner was not just not speaking to them, she was rude, insulting, and possibly behind some of the sabotage inflicted on their plants. Other plot owners shrugged and said she’d always been eccentric.

“So we named her chilli plants after her,” the stallholder finished. “She was the Wicked Old Witch ever after.”

The markets ceased soon after, but we enjoyed the chillies and saved the seeds. Every year we grow a couple of Wicked Witches and save seeds, and are grateful that we have our own land and fences to keep out the witches of horticulture from putting the Spell of the Boot on our tiny plants.

Here’s to Spring.

Happy Start to a New Year

Max is seventeen today. No, we haven’t put him on the local electoral roll.

Between wishing a Happy New Year to our lovely neighbours, enjoying the fireworks and staying up to finish our glasses of fizz, we got to bed – very early this morning. And woke late. But we did get outside, on a sunny and warm day that has outclassed every day since October 2021 began.

Max came out with us. He likes to stick with us, either because he finds us interesting or perhaps from some lion instinct to protect his herd, so when we’re out, he’s out. He even went for a run, tail straight up and yowling the cat equivalent of “Wheeeeeee!”

He’s seventeen today, according to his paperwork. That’s roughly equivalent to 84 in human terms, and if your 84 year old grandfather went out for a run on New Year’s Day you’d be entitled to call the local paper and get him the front page slot. He’s still healthy and seems content, still goes off in a dream and likes nothing better than sleeping on a human.

He’s also a good influence on our nervous young tortie. She was asleep on the cushion next to me and jumped off in a fright when I leaned forward – then came back, looked at Max still fast asleep and doing the complete opposite of panicking, and she decided that if he wasn’t worried, she wasn’t worried. She’s now back in her place, asleep and less inclined to budge when I move.

I submitted a short-short story to a podcast magazine last night, more as an exercise than anything. You can go out for a run without intending to stun the world at the next summer Olympics, and I count it as an achievement to send off a piece, without expecting the recipient to accept it.

2022 has started out well, then. Work in the garden, Max running around like an over-excited kitten in the sunshine and an evening spent watching rugby with cats asleep around us. I don’t bother with resolutions these days, as they never survived the first week of the year, but I have taken up three challenges – to write horror, to read 24 books fitting random categories chosen by a group to make us ‘Try something new’ and to spend February writing a stage play every 24 hours with The Literal Challenge.

Set small goals, enjoy time outside and adopt an elderly cat. They are inspiring. Happy birthday, Max.

Best Wishes for 2022

Photo by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay. Because after years of trying, I still haven’t got the hang of firework photos.

I found a card last month that said; “2021. A great year. Unless you wanted to go anywhere, do anything, or meet anyone.” I sent it to a friend who needed a laugh. But looking back on 2021 earlier today, we were pleased at what we’ve achieved in the year. Rosebeds, repaired compost heap structure, woodshed put up and filled, the kitchen finished and the floor in the living room finally laid down, and a work of art it is too. Wonderful underfoot and a work of art.

We are looking forward to 2022. Less than two hours to wait, though we won’t be tackling any large projects at midnight. We do have Plans, though. Finishing the repair on the compost heap structure. Anyone having a good laugh at how long it takes can consider that a two-bay structure measuring 2.4 meters deep by 4.8 metres long by 1.8 metres tall – getting the right angles right and putting a shuttering mechanism on the front face to hold back the grass when it is piled nearly two metres high – is a bit of an engineering challenge. The first bay went well. Now we have to repair the second bay to match it, but the hard part is done.

The rainy weather recently has been a good time to hide indoors and write. I submitted my Globe Soup flash fiction entry two days ago, sent off a weird fiction for a fantasy magazine yesterday and I’m currently shaving words for a flash fiction to a podcast magazine. From 1,200 words down to 800. No pressure, eh. But then again, no deadline for this one – the other two expire at midnight tonight, like 2021 does.

It was a kind day today, weatherwise. Sunny, largely dry and very warm. He repaired a broken panel on my car (at 17 years old, a cable-tied panel and a splash of nearly-matching touchup paint is good enough – it’s the sheer oomph under the bonnet that keeps me patching up this ancient speed queen). I cleared away some of the brambles in the planned fruit patch and leftover bean stalks on the veg plot, and pulled away the fleece that’s been protecting the over-wintering onions from frost. It was 15 degrees Centigrade at best, 11 degrees right now, and we were sweating in T-shirts today.

It’s been good to get outside today. We’ve forgotten how happy it makes us to work in decent weather. It’s been raining most of every day for several days, and we’ve found indoor jobs to do, like painting, writing and watching the excellent Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, a better explanation of virus control than was ever presented for adults in the daily briefings. My respect for Jonathon Van Tam has gone up immensely – those tortured football analogies were worse than having my tooth drilled, but hey, we’re rugby fans.

The shortest day’s over and we are telling each other we’re noticing the sunset getting later (what a lovely fiction), and I will be planting up the first seeds of 2022 in a fortnight. That’s the start of the year, for me, and I cannot wait.

Happy New Year to everyone reading this. Give yourselves something to look forward to and make it happen.

You know it’s all over when…

Boxing Day supper. Christmas colours, but not really traditional

We play a word game along the lines of “You know it’s all over when…” While I was working, Christmas was all over when I went back to work, which would have been the day after Boxing Day (having packed up early on the afternoon of Christmas Eve). Having given up work (or on those years when I got the lucky ticket and could take time off around the big day), Christmas was all over when we considered what we wanted to drink and came up with a mug of tea instead of dipping into the ocean of alcohol. Tonight, he had his preferred Boxing Day meal of cold turkey and ham with mashed potato and pickles – being vegetarian, I had the green and red salad above (that’s half of it… I was halfway down before it occurred to me to take a photo).

We have kept up our tradition of a game of Scrabble after a meal, and it’s currently one game all with some new words appearing (‘nazes’ was my favourite, and the definition wasn’t what I guessed it to be – ‘oe’ is one I have never heard before, but am very grateful it exists).

As soon as it stops raining, we need to clear the gutters, ready for the next downpour, and the cat is snuffling and looking sorry for herself, so the vet is on the list. Christmas 2021 is going down in memory. New Year still looms, and Twelfth Night with the wassail of our lazy cider apple trees – plus the gift I had from La Befana, courtesy of a friend (thank you!). And a week or ten days after Twelfth Night… I will set up the propagators, plant some chili and sweet pepper seeds and the 2022 growing year will be under way.

The trick is to always have something to look forward to, and whatever 2022 brings, I think we have plenty in store to enjoy.

Happy Christmas, yer R’s

Even before waking this morning, I admit to a mood a bit more Scrooge than Santa. The local FaceBook page got me cross as early as the 15th, when a resident at the far end of our village posted a shot of the anonymous letter shoved through her door telling her how vile her outside decorations were – sparking a long round of “Well, we know who wrote that!” and “It wasn’t me, I love her Christmas lights!” “Yes, you did, it’s your writing!”. Five reports of Santas and deer and lights stolen from outside people’s houses in the night over the course of last week just made the point that some people don’t care about landing on the naughty list.

Me? I’m full of Christmas dinner, and the cats are full of the turkey that would have been my share – already turning their noses up at freshly cooked poultry, and it’s not even the 26th yet. Slumped horizontal in the warm, sure there’s nothing decent to watch on TV and with a short story to finish for the Globe Soup competition that closes in a week’s time. Plus a terrific idea queued up behind it, courtesy of a book about fantasy writing sent to me by a friend for Jolabokaflodit.

The Jolabokaflodit began in 2019, for me, though I’m told it’s a Scandinavian tradition. The idea is that you give a book to a friend to be opened and read on Christmas Eve. I tried it out on friends in 2020 – got two books in return, one so sad that I struggled to finish it; the other so lyrical I bought the next two books in the trilogy within a fortnight. This year, three books have landed on our doorstep, and I have a new tradition to pass around – la Befana, the good witch who can be persuaded to send a friend a present to open on January 6th. I am waiting impatiently for that one, and in the meantime – hoping the Meanie Spirit flies away from our village before anyone is tempted to steal our guardian demons from our doorstep.

Hope your Christmas has been more good than evil, and that 2022 brings a better time for us all.

Clifton in Buckinghamshire sets up a Santa display every year. Excuse the blurs, guys – couldn’t stop.

Christmas Decoration

Sage. Green. Rough idea of the colour of one wall. Photo by PL_Mapho, Pixabay

We spent yesterday painting one of the walls in the living room. The colour we finally chose looked completely different on each sample patch we painted, so in the end we chose the closest to what we wanted and slapped it on one of the walls. It looks good. On that wall, and that’s the best we can do. If I’d been on my own, I’d have painted this morning till it was all done once over and stuck the Christmas decorations up tomorrow morning, but he’s a tad more conventional than me, so we called it a day yesterday evening.

This morning – one half-decorated wall (needs another coat) and the sample patches covered over so they aren’t standing out. He wouldn’t let me write ‘Merry Christmas’ across the wall in the colour we’re going to paint it, but – if you’re ever going to graffito your own walls, now’s the damn time.

We put up the decorations around the walls, near the ceiling, and they look even better against the paler green. Next step was to remove the decorations Genie brought in for our delight – so many feathers on the dining room floor that I know there’s one less blackbird alive out there. We haven’t found the plucked corpse yet. Genie has gone on the naughty list.

This is the last week of the excellent project called ‘What the Cat Dragged In’, the doctoral thesis of Hannah Lockwood, student at the University of Derby. She started a citizen science project three years ago as part of her research to investigate what domestic felines prey on – whether they kill, injure, fetch it home, let it go… I registered two of our cats on it, knowing that neither was a hunter – Sasha too elderly and stately, Genie too timid – hoping that they would rack up a nil score that would skew the overall total of cat-kills in the UK towards the ‘not-so-deadly’ side. And that’s the point when Genie became a stone-cold killer, fetching us home a variety of rodents, birds, one rabbit, maybe a rat three weeks ago and today, a blackbird. I still treasure the day she and her brother dragged a live blackbird chick in through the catflap and let it go. The chick chased them up the hallway and up the stairs, and swore at me as I tried to rescue it – swore all the way back to its parents. Maybe this is the same blackbird, grown up and off guard. Much as I hate it, the alternative is to lock her in permanently, and she’d hate that. So I have to dob her in one last time for slaughter of the local wildlife. Best of luck to Hannah Lockwood, hopefully soon to gain her doctorate.

There we are. House dressed for Christmas, tree up and lit, presents under the tree (not many – we don’t buy big presents). Ten minutes to go and we are ready for Christmas.

We’ve even listened to ‘A Fairytale of New York’. Done.

The Winter Solstice, at last

We have just thawed out after an evening singing Christmas songs and carols around a bonfire in the community wood. It was a good evening. It started with us walking down to the wood with lanterns and lighters and stakes to help light the way from the gate to the bonfire site, and finding a car already there, parked across the gate. I thought it was an early singer, keeping warm, so I bent down to say hi, and it was a policeman. He was just catching up on updates, but when he heard we were holding a carol singing evening, he said he’d come back later – if it was okay?

It was an open invite. We had around thirty people gathered around the bonfire by the end, with varying degrees of tin ear from my basso growl to a group of serious choristers discussing who would take the descant roles. The policeman turned up close to half-time and was directed to take a mince pie and a mug of coffee or tea – we were all standing laughing and chatting when the serious choristers started up on the second half.

From ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ to Mariah Carey and ‘Fairytale of New York’ (though they didn’t take up my suggestion of ‘WTF Are My Presents?’ by Letters From Cleo), we covered the range and finished with ‘Come All Ye Faithful’. We did teach our version of ‘Shepherds Watched’ to the tune of ‘Ilkley Moor Bah Tat’ to a friend, and it was echoing across the field as we packed up all the lights and left.

It’s just past full moon, a perfect frosty moonlit night to be singing round a fire. When we doused the fire with water, the steam rose up in a column and fell around us as flakes of glittering frost.

From this day on, the days will get longer and the hours of stargazing shorter. We have the hardest weather yet to come, but there’s hope, and Spring is on its way.

It’s the Little Things that Matter

I admit, the picture above is an image from the excellent site Pixabay. Nothing quite so festive exists in our house at the moment. We’ve stalled on progress on getting our living room into order; the carpenters who installed the new living room floor advised us to leave it a week to let the oil settle before rolling heavy furniture in, and we took our week away in Devon as the break the floor needed. But having returned, we’re finding that it’s not just a case of rolling the furniture in.

We’re still looking for the colour we want on the walls to replace the dark sage green we’ve had for almost twenty years. We have a stone surround to the fireplace in a strong, dark bluish-green that restricts the range of colours we could have without making visitors want to hurk (and yes, I have looked into replacing the surround – nothing’s as nice as what’s there). It should be easy, but the wall is a patchwork of sample colours that looked ideal on the colour card, but look like a large bird has been very ill at regular intervals when the paint landed on the wall.

We’re filling cracks in the wall that have appeared over the years, painting the new sections of skirting board and putting softer feet on the base of the sofa, brought in from the outside shelter. I wanted to wait until the wall is painted and the room is finished, but today is a Soddit Day.

We won’t get it painted before Christmas. I’m still planting bulbs in the local wood, still sorting Christmas cards (spent three days writing them, with notes, writing an extra card to a friend who is now widowed and facing poor health alone – and then one of our cards was returned to us, which is a whole extra worry). So today we set a series of tasks.

We sanded the Polyfilla, got all the Christmas decoration hooks firmly set into the wall, painted the last four sample patches on the wall (still not sure) and sealed all the Polyfilla with paint from reject samples. A quick coffee and mince pie, and then we set the sofa on its new feet and rolled the TV and stand in. One table and a G&T each later and the room was transformed.

Stuff waiting for all the decorating to be done. We have TV for the first time in seven weeks, we have a warm living room with beautiful new floorboards and we have a sofa to sprawl on. It’s made a huge difference to how we feel. The elderly cats have come to loll on the sofa with us, obviously pleased to be on familiar ground again. We’re not telly addicts by any measure – it’s the return of normal life that has pleased us.

We were going to move all the stray furniture from the dining room back into the living room and then put up the tree in the dining room as usual – but this is a year of changes. TV, sofa, cats and table – tomorrow, the tree goes up in the fashionably sparse living room, the decorations go on and the lights get wound around and switched on. When that happens – I will count it as the start of Christmas, and the painting can wait till next year.

I should think everyone’s the same. You’ve worked hard, you’ve reached the point where it feels as if it’s not worth the effort to write one more card or wrap one more present, and Christmas feels like three months’ slog for a day’s regimented fun. I’ve called a halt. We’re warm, the cats are asleep all around us and we’ll have some festive lights and decs up tomorrow. That’s good enough for me to call it Christmas.

Photo by Myshun, Pixabay – because ours wouldn’t dare.

A few days in Lynmouth

Lynmouth in sunshine – photo by nhughes552, Pixabxay

We’ve just had a few days’ holiday in Lynmouth, north Devon, to celebrate His Lordship’s 70th birthday. We’ve never been to Lynmouth before, though we did spend a week at Croyde Bay in the late 70’s. Camping. We aren’t that tough these days, especially in December.

Don’t be fooled by the photo above, we’ve had typical December weather – chilly, drizzly, windy and Storm Barra blew some slates off when we first arrived. We’ve yet to find out what our garden looks like, but we’re hoping the dead trees are still upright and the power’s on.

We’ve walked around the local shops – about half of them are closed for the season, re-opening in March or April 2022. It’s better, somehow, peering in through the windows at the goods laid out, not able to get in and buy them. Like a permanent Christmas Eve.

The shops and cafes that were open were welcoming visitors. On our visit to Woolacombe Bay, the entire town was closed, except for one cafe overlooking the beach – which was doing a roaring trade. Windows starting to steam up against the chill outside, though we could still see the sand being blown along the beach from sea to dunes below. After we’d walked a short way along the beach, got the sand out of our eyes and had a tea and (eventually) sandwich, we’d sampled everything Woolacombe has to offer in December and left – Lynmouth and Lyntown are a lot more efficient at relieving winter visitors of their cash.

Christmas decoration on the pier – piled up fishing crates decorated like a Christmas tree

Last night, we had a meal in the RIsing Sun in Lynmouth and rolled out of the pub at nine at night. We’d been watching the boats slowly rising on the tide beyond the harbour wall and came out to inspect them. There were some solid little fishing boats, a half-submerged dinghy and a deflated inflatable. Luckily, without an outboard to drag it down. It reminded us of the time we returned from a three week sailing holiday in Norway to find our dinghy had been dragged under by the tides and was completely submerged on the mooring. It took us an hour’s bailing and lifting to retrieve it, and my sister in law was less than amused at the delay to our published arrival for dinner.

Today we’ve walked from Lynmouth to Lynton, from the Exmoor Visitor Centre to the main street of Lynton 500 feet above. First of all along the poetry trail – twice crossing the funicular railway (closed in December) and passing poems written by members of the public. Lyrical thoughts on the sea below, warnings about the seagulls after yer chips and the heartfelt prayer of “Please, please, please, Can I have some new knees!”. We had an award-winning pasty in the Cracker Barrel Tea-Rooms at the top before going back down in the drizzle. The view down into the valley is spectacular, and the end of the Lyn Gorge route passes over the powerful rush of the West Lyn River, then up to the last clatter of the East Lyn River – the two rivers that caused the 1952 floods that destroyed a large part of the town.

It’s been fun, it’s been a holiday (so far) undisturbed by vehicle breakdowns. He’s seen the places where he went on holiday as a child and where he rode the Lands’ End Trials on a motorcycle as an adult. I’ve seen the places I was apparently taken to as a very young child on holiday, and can understand what my brothers are referring to.

It’s been time off, and frankly, we’ve had very little of that over the last two years.

In terms of writing – I managed to finish the Globe Soup 7 Day Challenge just before I left, and I’m pleased with myself. It’s not an award-winner by any means, but I was randomly allocated the genre of Western, and I was never likely to write the gold star version of a Western. I’ve seen Rawhide and The Big Country as a young child, and watched Clint Eastwood Westerns – enjoyed Blazing Saddles when I’m in possession of enough alcohol – seen High Noon once, and that’s enough. As with most What the Ell genres I’m asked to write in, it’s been fun trying.