Читать книгу The Flower-Patch Garden Book - Flora Klickmann - Страница 7

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An uninvited distant cousin, three-times-removed, had come down to the Flower-Patch from London, to sympathise with us.

A coal strike was in full blast at the time, and he wondered how on earth we managed to exist in a place that had neither gas nor electric light; and with only the regulation strike-allowance of half a hundredweight of coal per week—if even we managed to lay hands (or rather, shovel) on that much. He said he had never before understood why there was always trouble in Ireland, till he sampled the sort of fire his landlady was providing, made with non-combustible peat, which was all she could get to warm him.

Happening to have due to him one of those many long week-end holidays that seem to accrue so often to officials in Government Departments, he decided to look us up and obtain first-hand information as to our struggles and privations.

Of course, ill-natured people might have said that he only came because it was a simplified way of spending his leave, in pleasant surroundings, at a time when firing was scarce. But ours is a united family! We don’t say such things!

On arrival he told us he had always felt he would really like to sample life in a howling wilderness. I replied with Thoreau’s words, “A howling wilderness almost never howls; the howling is chiefly in the imagination of the hearer!”

After producing some cigarettes, as his contribution toward keeping the home fires burning, he spread himself out comfortably before a particularly cheerful fire, and commiserated.

How we could put up with it for more than a week-end he didn’t know! (though he himself seemed to be putting up with it very contentedly).

But the Head of Affairs had not much spare time just then, to sit at his feet and listen! For the cold weather is a busy season in the woods. Strike, or no strike, trees have to be dealt with, and cut when the right year arrives.

Townspeople have very little idea of the systematic care that goes to the production of profitable timber; neither do they always realise the value of woods in these days of universal shortage.

Though a considerable acreage of wooded land appertains to the Flower-Patch, all the outstanding trees are catalogued. The very large conifers are not cut except where it is impossible to avoid it. Ancient oaks and beeches and limes are left, wherever possible, when the regulation year arrives for the cutting of a mixed wood. All boundary trees are preserved, of course; they are the landmarks and mentioned in the old deeds.

“Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance”—this injunction of the ancient lawgiver still holds good.

Hollies, yews, and wild cherries are left, by my special desire, when they do not seriously impede the woodmen. And yet another concession to my peculiar preferences is the way the men leave the strands and cables of the Traveller’s Joy, that darling of the woods, that very often climbs to the tops of our trees, and crowns the year with masses of silvery seedpods, which are like sea foam, when one looks down upon them, from the hill above.

In addition to the work of felling, that comes round automatically, when a wood is ripe for the use of man—in some cases fourteen years, in others twenty-eight or more, will be the allotted span—there is the planting of young stock, to take the place of that which has been cut.

Another aspect of the woods, and one calling for attention, is the havoc caused by the wind, which takes a heavy annual toll in this region. Being in a high and exposed position, the south-west Atlantic gales drive up from the channel with terrific force, and frolic over the hills in grand style, unhindered by anything. One never knows what damage they may do.

On a mild sunny day, the wind may suddenly spring up perhaps for only a few hours, and clear down the best part of a wood, the trees toppling over like skittles in one furious wind-drive. We reckon to find blown down anything from five to twenty-five trees every winter; and these have to be dealt with.

The curious part of these storms is the local character of the damage done. The gale may leave untouched great trees which one would imagine were right in the teeth of the wind, and yet it will attack the centre of a wood, or a group of trees which appeared to be well sheltered by others, twirling them about, whirlwind fashion, then leaving them lying in rows on the ground, in the very midst of other trees, which have not lost so much as a branch.

At the time our visitor arrived we had just dealt with eleven magnificent larches, victims of a hurricane. The trees had been duly relieved of their branches and the big trunks were in process of being sawn into 4-feet lengths, and stacked in the wood-house and in barns. We were on the point of sawing up a big oak, which it had been necessary to cut down the previous spring, because it completely blocked a most desirable view.

Trees can so soon obstruct the outlook in a land of woods and forests with wonderful distances. One tree can shut out miles of scenery, if it is allowed to remain too long in the wrong place.

My husband suggested that instead of sitting in an easy-chair and feeling sorry for us, our visitor might come out and lend a hand at gathering sticks, and getting in a little kindling wood!

He said certainly and with pleasure. He didn’t mind going out if there was anything he could do. Believed in plenty of exercise. Enlarged on his prowess at golf. Wondered how any relation of his could exist out of reach of a golf course, since there was nothing to see out-of-doors in winter.

Nothing to see! I could have shaken the man for being so stupidly blind!

Even if the frost cuts off all the flowers for a few days, there are the bare trees with branches of most varied designs, but all of them beautiful. There are ferns in plenty in all the sheltered spots, ivies with leaf-forms as varied as the trees. And above all, the mosses and lichens, only to be seen in their full beauty in the damp mild winters in which England excels.

Some of the mosses have charming little blossoms, green perhaps, or brown, or red. There is a lovely variety with crimson blossoms, little upright filaments with the tiny flower at the top. The effect of an expanse of this crimson, as one sees it on the top of many a wall in January, is very rich.

There is one velvety moss with a golden-yellow tint in it, quite a “shot” effect, when seen in certain lights.

The grey-green cup-moss, with a tiny dew-drop in each cup, is a jewel of loveliness.

One species resembles miniature fir trees-a Liliputian forest of them!

Some kinds are close and soft, covering stones with a smooth green surface that might almost be taken for suede.

One beautiful silver-grey moss had always delighted me, whenever I found it on the rocks and walls and growing in the woods. I didn’t know its name, till one day a friend from Sweden was staying with us and exclaimed on seeing it:

“Why, there is some reindeer moss! The true reindeer moss! It’s the first time I have seen it in England.”

She told me how the animals love it, and will smell it through six or eight feet of snow, digging down till they get at it.

The way certain of the mosses provide for themselves, when nothing in the way of sustenance appears to be forthcoming, is very remarkable.

When a seed settles on a stone, one concludes there must be a modicum of earth there for it to cling to, though this is seldom visible. Yet the seed seems to find something upon which to start life. Then it gradually accumulates a little mound of earth (leaf-mould, literally) which it makes by the decay of its own tiny foliage! Only the top of the shoot is green; the rest of its foliage withers away, as it is not required when a new green shoot, or leaf, is formed.

Thus each, in turn, decays, and forms a substance on which the plant continues to build.

Truly an extraordinary process!

In the hot weather, if the moss is exposed to the sun, it withers and appears to be dead. Yet it revives with the damp cold weather, and apparently none the worse for its baking. How its roots keep alive, with nothing but the bare surface of the rock to hold to, and often no water, is one of Nature’s many mysteries!

Last year, a clearing had to be made in one wood that had become too overgrown. Ivy had made merry to such an extent, climbing the trees, looping itself from one branch to the next, and sending up a thicket of real ivy-trees from the top of the original owners of the soil, till it had literally formed a dark roof to the wood, through which very little light could penetrate.

For years, no one had had the heart to interfere with this state of affairs; because it was a favourite roosting place for the pheasants.

But at last stern measures had to be taken. The land was running to waste. Most of the trees were dead, owing to the inroads of the ivy. We decided to clear the ground entirely of trees; leave it open to the winds of heaven for a season; and then replant with young stock the following year.

On examining the dark tangles, we discovered what we had not realised before, that these were all apple trees. This was the remains of an ancient orchard. Probably a century or more ago, some little homestead had stood where now it is only stone-strewn woodland.

In the course of the work of clearing, a bonfire was necessary. The amount of useless stuff which had to be got rid of was amazing, once the men started to haul down the “roof.” The main ivy stems that had strangled the trees were often twice the size of a man’s arm in circumference and bigger than the tree trunks!

The bonfire burned for several days. Then the big expanse of greyish-white ash was left, as usual, to get quite cold. After which, it gets put on the garden borders, being one of the most valuable of fertilisers. But in this instance, as the clearing was a good distance from the garden, the ash got overlooked, and finally forgotten.

Twelve months later, when we went to inspect the cleared land, in order to decide details of replanting, we were surprised to see in the distance a great plot of some plant that looked like shining gold; it is no mere figure of speech to say that it was almost dazzling, so bright was the colouring. We found that the whole of the bonfire ash was covered with a thick moss bearing gold-yellow and rust-red blossoms. It was an unbelievable sight. Everybody was fetched to see it; and one and all stood silently before it; for this resurrection of loveliness from what was dead grey ash so short a time ago, fairly took one’s breath away.

The moss seed must have drifted from the many green bosses on the shady side of the boundary wall; and finding the situation to its liking had gone ahead jubilantly.

We have left it untouched.

The lichens, too, are a wonderful feature of the winter months; so difficult to describe; impossible to sketch or paint; baffling in the way they appear—and then disappear again!

Stones which all through the summer look bare and grey, with the coming of the soft November mists and rain will take on a marvellous range of colours, and display plant life which is often so minute as to be indistinguishable as anything but colour, unless one puts it under the microscope.

There is one particularly lovely shade which is neither blue nor green nor yellow. It paints the stone a milky pea-green in places; in others, it develops almost the colour of sulphur. It is very beautiful and very vivid. It appears with unfailing regularity year after year, in the same places, so soon as the climate is favourable for its development. Then, the grey stones suddenly seem alive; and the colour remains throughout all the damp autumn, winter and early spring days.

Many of the lichens are a silvery grey; some are actually black; while rust, orange, yellow, slate-blue, brown, and fawn varieties are plentiful.

Certain species are distinctly blue-green. And one of the lovely scenes which Nature paints for us every winter, is an expanse of old apple and pear trees, stretching out gnarled branches covered with a blue-green sheen from the lichens which have made their home there. While great branches of yellow-green mistletoe, thick with white berries, suspend themselves from upper branches. And behind the orchard trees is a background of purple-stemmed birches. The contrast is remarkably beautiful.

The lichens increase year after year, just as the bushes and trees add to their dimensions.

I first noticed this in a round patch of lichen, that appeared one autumn on the centre of a big stone in a wall. It was a black and silver lichen—I don’t know its name; but the colours will suffice.

In its growth, it looked something like a feathery bit of seaweed, only it was apparently glued fast to the stone, and was nearly circular. It disappeared in the summer, or else it so shrivelled with the heat that it was indistinguishable from the grey stone.

The following autumn, it reappeared; but the circle was larger. Each year it has increased in circumference, till now it nearly covers the stone; it is most decorative, although it is entirely black and grey!

I know that moss gardening is not possible for many people, on account of its limitations. The damp winter season is not every one’s ideal, when it comes to working out of doors.

But when an able-bodied person, in the midst of such profusion, says: “There is nothing to see!”

Well——!

I was glad our visitor was removed from that easy-chair!

First we showed him the old wood-house and the barns. He was fairly amazed when he saw the orderly rows of massive tree trunks, which half filled the place. Then the stacks of branches, roughly graded as to size, so that large and smaller ones were not too much entangled. While in another corner were the small, twiggy, leafless branches, with their little knots all the way up, and some with brown cones still clinging to them.

And yet another special place was given over to a portion of a beautiful Deodar tree, which had also come down in the same gale. And unless you know the perfume of this tree when cut, it is impossible to make you understand the delightful sweetness of the scent that filled the wood-house. Not a cloying sweetness, but a scent that is a real tonic, and lasts as long as there is any sap left in the wood. Some years ago, an unknown reader of my books, who lives in Cyprus, kindly sent me a spindle, as used by the local peasant women. It was evidently made of the same wood, for it has scented the box in which I keep it ever since.

Our distant cousin, three-times-removed, after looking in silence at the contents of the wood-house, said, at last, that there was no breath left in him, he was so astonished. But we told him he would have to find a little somewhere, for there was more serious work awaiting him than merely looking at tree trunks. And we led the way to the next job.

The tree we were after was lying much farther down the hill, and a very steep descent at that. We went down steps to a lower garden level. Then down a second flight to a small lawn. Down a third flight which landed us in an orchard, if you can really call a place an orchard when it also grows roses against the wall, pink, white, crimson, and cream, with yellow broom, purple buddleia, scarlet hawthorn, pink flowering almonds, as well as other irrelevant items.

But I have got into the bad, mad habit of dropping in a tree or a bush wherever there is a convenient space. And as I can’t grow syringas, lilacs, tree lupins, forsythias, wiegelias, ribes, fuchsias and such-like flowering shrubs in the middle of the woods, and the bushes take up too much room in the flower-beds, I have found that the orchards offer convenient accommodation. And whenever a fruit tree comes down with the wind or old age, a flowering bush goes in its place, with a ring of daffodils or narcissus around it.

Of course, new fruit trees also go into the orchards. But as these are not very big to start with and they take some years to come to bearing,—about seven or eight years as a rule—it is as well to fill up the interval with flowering shrubs. We get a good deal of pleasure out of them while waiting for the fruit from the new trees.

At the very bottom of the orchard lay the massive tree trunk we were seeking. It had only been there a few months, yet already the ivy had crept up, and laid sprays of the sweetest little leaves about the rough rind of the tree, while blackberry and bryony had thrown their arms about it, with a tangle still remaining of crimson, orange, and purple-bronze leaves, and scarlet berries like a child’s necklace.

One of the many wonderments of Nature is her activity, even though there may seem to be periods when there is nothing doing. Yet, return in a week’s time, and you will see a change. There has been movement, development, alteration, somewhere. She never really sleeps. And the rate at which she increases such pertinacious things as bracken, bindweed, willow herb, ground ivy, brambles, and a thousand other wildings, is a constant marvel to the one who has to wrestle with their idiosyncrasies when trying to tame the forest primeval!

Two of our men—experts at the work—had started on the tree. With a two-handed saw, seven feet in length, they were finishing the first cut in the thickest portion of the trunk. Their saw went to and fro with a steady, unhurried, regular rhythm, almost singing a song so cheerfully easy did it sound, the men moving in perfect unison.

Of course they were doing their best, as there was an audience; but in any case, they were quite aware that they were giving an exhibition of skill and finished workmanship that was well worth watching. Knowing themselves to be two of the cleverest and most experienced men at this work in the country (and such rural workers know their own value and their own exceptional powers), they handled the fallen monarch as easily, and with no more apparent effort, than if it had been a child’s Christmas-tree. They made no show of using tremendous strength to impress the onlookers; there was no fussation; no attempt at display; merely calm, steady work, that appeared to be ridiculously simple, and gave no hint of its dangers or its difficulties. But the way that saw slipped through the wood ought to have been significant to the feeblest intellect.

“Now just look at those men!” the cousin said. (We were looking; obviously; he needn’t have told us to do so!) “Did you ever see such slow, deliberate playing with a saw!” (Being a relative, he, of course, considered himself privileged to criticise our doings, our house, our employees, anything in fact that was ours!) “And two of them at it,” he continued scornfully, “when one man ought to be able to manage all they are doing, even if he were standing on his head! Isn’t the British workman the very limit in the leisurely way he makes a job pan out, always needing another man to help him do nothing, and neither of them getting anywhere worth talking about in the end.”

“Ah!” was all the Head of Affairs said; but I guessed he was thinking all the more, and primarily about the men in Government offices!

“Why, if I had to do a job like that,” the cousin went on, warming virtuously to his theme, “I should make that saw fairly fly; revel in it too; instead of meandering along as they are doing; saving themselves with every stroke. And I could do it, too, though it isn’t my business in life. I made a dandy of a hutch for my rabbits, out of old boxes, when I was a youngster.”

“Why don’t you go down and show them how?” the Head of Affairs suggested, with wicked amiability.

Nothing loath, and quite pleased with the idea, he went down the hill and volunteered his services.

The men were not surprised at his offer of assistance. They were expecting it, for most of our visitors like to try their hand at wielding the fearsome-looking cross-saw. The first log had been sawn off, they were measuring and preparing to start on the next one.

“Which end will you take, Sir?” the head man inquired, holding the saw, while his subordinate stood aside, leaving a vacant handle.

“Oh, I’ll work it single-handed,” the cousin replied airily, as though he had been brought up on seven-feet saws from his cradle.

“Certainly, Sir. In that case you’ll probably prefer this,” producing a single-handed “farmer’s” saw, heavy, and grim as to teeth, but a few feet less in length. “It’s easier to manage than the cross-saw.”

The cousin hesitated for a moment and glanced at the smaller weapon a trifle superciliously, but wisely decided to take it. The cross-saw looked larger and altogether more formidable, now that he was close to it.

He took his stand, and debated where to begin. The two men politely withdrew, and commenced operations on another tree which was marked to come down. They may have wished to spare him embarrassment; or merely desired to hide their own smiles.

Then he started to work, hacking a bit here and a bit there; only, unfortunately, try how he would, he couldn’t get the saw to “bite.” It stuck; it wobbled; it scraped in an agonising manner; it caught itself in the bark; and at last it nearly broke in half—but no sort of an impression did it make on that tree trunk.

“I say!” he called to the men. “Haven’t you a finer saw? This is such a clumsy affair, with no go at all in it; and villainously awkward to handle.”

They relieved him of the “farmer’s” saw, replacing it with a most ladylike implement; and even started a cut for him.

“That’s more like it,” he said, with a gratified look at the opening they had made for him.

They withdrew again. The ladylike saw started to screech in a tone that suggested suicide, as he shoved it down with all the force he could muster. I felt sure its last hour had arrived. But no! when he tried to haul it up again, it wouldn’t budge. He had managed somehow to get it wedged immovably in the cut the man had made. Neither by tugs, or knocks, or any other blandishments, could he persuade it to move either in or out, up or down.

“You seem a long while getting up steam!” the Head of Affairs called out derisively. “I’m waiting to see how you do it!”

But by this time heated language was almost blistering the saw; and the head man reappeared in response to an urgent summons.

I fancy his hand was crossed with silver, which enabled him to extract the saw. Anyhow, he unblushingly assured the gentleman that knack was all that was needed; and that he certainly had the knack (!), only he just wanted a little more practice to bring it out. Would he like to try on a smaller log?

But the cousin suddenly remembered that he must write some urgent letters before post time!