The Hidden Orchard and Other Rooms

I really should have posted this a few weeks ago because the apple blossom has fallen from the trees and, if successfully pollinated, the fruit should be starting to form.

We have an orchard of sorts closer to the house but it has been neglected. It contains one ancient cooking apple tree and two crabs. There used to be damsons but they are broken down now. Recent plantings of fruit trees have not been successful. A greengage and pear never took off. The Katy apple tree that Les planted is doing OK and the currants and gooseberries are reasonable if we can get to them before the blackbirds. For the past few years Bert has been planting other trees in there including a tiny apple that Mammy grew from a pip. Who knows how that will turn out.

A few years ago we applied for and received a number of native Irish apple trees from Trees on the Land which were not planted in the orchard. They are in an out of the way spot and I'd forgotten all about them. Then, a few weeks ago Bert said that I really ought to go see the apple blossom before it dropped.

What apple blossom?

He reminded me where it was so I grabbed a camera and went out to see.

I've heard that professional gardeners advise making 'rooms' in a garden so that all is not visible at once. It's a good idea. But I'm not sure that they mean that the rooms are hidden by overgrown raspberry canes, great clumps of nettles or fallen laburnums. That's what here is like. Our outside is packed wih rooms. For instance, if you want to see our climbing hydrangea you need to go round the back of the long shed where it grows profusely with a clump of yellow welsh poppies at its feet. Bert put it there because it prefers a north facing aspect. He wasn't bothered that it faces a big dungheap.

We seem to have forgotten the 'room' hidden under the sweeping branches of the big beech trees. This was a den created by Martha and friends.

Why we can't have nice things

Five years later

Bert's Tough Day

Bert had a tough day yesterday. First of all he had to move the herd, all seven of them, from one field to another. This involved shunting them out of one field, crossing a busy B road, and shunting them into another. He had at his disposal three sturdy cow hands, Les, Peter and myself. Les was in charge of halting the traffic at the Portglenone end, I took care of the Cully side and Peter and Bert gathered them up. That was the plan anyway. One of the 'bastes' was a visitor, a young bull belonging to Clint - that was in with our lot to act as a teaser. A young Lothario there to help Bert figure out when the girls were ready for the AI* man. And he was a teaser all right. With no intentions of doing the right thing he made a mad dash for the hedge and charged through a barbed wire fence into another man's field - and the two calves along with him. Meanwhile the cows were all in the new field enjoying the luscious grass. Peter and Bert did their best but they hadn't a hope. We brought one of the cows back and eventually the calves joined her and back to the luscious grass they went but no sign of Clint's bull. Bert tramped the fields but no sign of the teaser. He had to tell Clint who, it turned out, took a philosophical view of the matter.

They both went out to look for the bull, Clint driving the roads and Bert tramping the fields in torrential rain. At last the bull was found and penned and Clint drove off to get a trailer. Bert trudged home, soaked to the skin. He had just reached the end of the lane when one of the neighbours stopped him, a trim woman in her fifties, driving a smart little car. She called him over.

Bert, I was meaning to ask you. What are you doing about the trees?

The trees? What trees? 

The wood. The wood at the back of our house. What are you doing about it? 

Nothing. Why do you ask?

It's just that we were told it was only going to be there for fifteen or twenty years and now we can't see the road or the nice green fields. All we can see are those trees. We all hate them. 

Well I have no plans to do anything with them in the near future. They'll be there for a while yet.

Bert was disconcerted about this exchange. It never occurred to him that anyone would have a problem with the wood. He loves it, loves the wild life that lives there and is delighted that bluebells are beginning to flourish in it.

He told Clint who was practical as always.

Huh! If she doesn't like it she should move house. It's the countryside. Things change.

Later that afternoon the AI man turned up. Not Henry VIII this time, his brother Prince Arthur. He'd been caught in a short, sharp hailstorm where big chunks of ice had hit his car. We could actually see where the paint had flecked off. That made the downpour we'd had seem like a treat.

It faired up later and Bert took four dogs and the wee grey cat for a walk in the woods where they saw a fox. It wasn't a bad end to the day but it made me nervous for the hens, especially as he'd spotted fox cubs earlier whilst tramping other fields looking for Clint's young bull.

Bert's Wood

AI* Artificial insemination.

The Wall

Katy, Hannah and Zoe, sometime in the 90s. 365 views so far...

...and the 30th most interesting photograph on my Flickr account on 30/03/15. That's my three girls in Dreen, perhaps taking a break from a game of rounders. Clint has all those trees cut down now and cattle sheds where they stood. In my uni days I used to walk up the road from the train and look for the first glimpse of the trees and feel so proud that I lived in such a wooded place. Clint said the trees were diseased but what really bothered him was the amounts of leaves that dropped in Autumn. The trees were a delight but, it has to be said, his cattle sheds are very fine too. He cut down the trees and dismantled the dry stone wall that Bert's father built. Said it was 'full of rat's nests'. It wasn't.

Johnny building the stone wall

 Summer wall

Winter wall

I was so cross with Clint for getting rid of that wall but it's been a long time and I had to let it go. I have the photographs and my memories.

 And Finally.  Look! Those girls were only following in their mother's fashion footsteps with that flannel checked shirt look. It wasn't the Seattle grunge scene a-tall.

Looking Forward

Bert is out tonight playing the claro and the whistle with his muso mates. Pearlie and I are all on our lonesome. Pearlie is doing her puzzles and worrying that Bert isn't saved. I am making wine.

One of Bert's (muso) friends has connections with a greengrocer and he brings us quantities of fruit and vegetables for the pigs. Sometimes if the produce is only slightly sad looking I use it for other projects. Like making wine. The other day he brought us lots of carrots. And as I had already defrosted Clint's windfall peaches from the summer I had two lots of wine to make tonight.

Making wine is like planting trees in that it requires a bit of belief in the future. Trees can take a lifetime to mature, while country wines get there in a year or two. A lot can happen in a lifetime, a lot can change in a year or two.

On Saturday a family friend, a retired police officer, stood in our kitchen and explained to us why he had decided not to take up a lucrative job offer to train detectives in Afghanistan. He had grandchildren, he had sons and he had an elderly aunt who depended on him. He told us that money was all very well but how much money does a body really need? He wanted to see his grandchildren grow up, he didn't want to make his aunt fearful and unhappy. That man, who had recently passed a medical with flying colours, is this night lying in hospital after suffering a catastrophic stroke. He is very, very ill. That's the change a few days can bring, never mind a year.

Little wonder Pearlie fears for her Bertie's unsaved soul. Me? I'll carry on making wine in the hopes that we'll all be around to drink it in six months, a year or even, 2013.

I Suppose I'm Happy

My husband has left me, but only for a short vacation to Spain, Murcia to be exact. And he has left me the pigs, the chickens and thousands of plants to look after. Thankfully he has not left me his mother. She is on holiday too, but she only got as far as the Doagh Road. She was not impressed when she heard that her only beloved child was heading to Spain, said, "I dinnae know what's taking him over there. Would somewhere nearer home not hae done him!" I expect she meant Portrush.

While the pigs and the chickens are easy, the potted trees, shrubs and climbers are a nightmare. I was hours watering this evening and Don Quixote was annoying me. Well not the Don exactly but some bloody Librivox reader. She kept swallowing her words and was giving me the impression she hadn't a notion of the meaning of the text. Then the hose exploded and I drenched myself. Undaunted I fixed it and carried on. Must have a word with Bert about the ridiculous amount of trees hanging about this shanty. I shall insist that he must either sell them, plant them or throw them over a hedge.

So watering all done now, I'm wearing clean, dry pyjamas, blogging, listening to Pink Floyd, downloading Tess of the d'Urbervilles (with proper actor-type reader) and drinking gin. I suppose I'm happy.

Here We Go Planting Nuts In May

I am now on my fourth LibriVox audio book. I've just finished 'A Tale of Two Cities' and am halfway through 'Heart of Darkness'. I've also been working in the garden, which is a sad neglected place where scutch grass and buttercups have been making a takeover bid.

I like weeding and I like listening to books while I'm doing it. Unfortunately for Bert, who works on the strawberry bed while I tear at nettles and scutch, my audio book makes me antisocial. I faintly hear him speaking and I shout,

I can't talk to you now! They're storming the Bastille!

He tries again a little later and I roar,

Give me a minute! Miss Pross and Madame Defarge are fighting to the death!

Yesterday we spent the dusky hour planting hazel trees in the wood. Bonnie, Paddy and Holly de Cat accompanied us. The hedge birds were frantically busy, as they always are at that time of the evening, the baby long-eared owls in the Scotch pine were starting their nightly tumult for food, the back lane was heavy with the smell of May and Blossom and cow dung. I carried a spade and Bert carried a big bundle of indifferent looking hazel whips, that any sensible person would have thrown over the hedge.   

We began the planting. I said,

Those will never grow. There's no 'R' in the month.

Och! They might grow.

I never saw the like of you for being at some fool enterprise that'll never make you a penny.

Sure what odds about money? 

Suppose you're right. I mean, how big a headstone will you need?

True.

I love these long evenings when we can do all this crazy outside stuff.

Me too.

And I love you too.

I know.

Natural Graft

Natural Graft, originally uploaded by NellyMoser.