Читать книгу The Flower-Patch Garden Book - Flora Klickmann - Страница 8

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Because the woodmen’s work looks so easy, when one sees them dealing with the trees, the spectator is often misled into thinking there is nothing much in it. Anyone can wield a saw! is a prevalent notion among average men. And, although some would modestly refrain from offering to fell a big tree, especially after inspecting the woodman’s axe and feeling its weight, scarcely a man would have any hesitation about his own ability to saw up the tree, once it was down.

Yet knowledge as well as scientific handling is necessary for that branch of work; and the knowledge of the expert woodman is often remarkably extensive, particularly that of the older men. I have learnt so much from them.

Every tree has a different grain; the saw soon senses this, and the worker must know how to humour the saw. Just as the bark of every tree is quite distinct from every other tree, so is the “feel” of the wood, when the saw cuts through it. You may give the same rhythmic movement, and send the saw through each piece of timber with the same measured swing, yet the action of the saw when it cuts through a trunk of the white close-grained ash is quite different from its action when cutting the reddish coarser-grained wood of the larch. The light wood of the horse chestnut responds to the saw in a manner quite unlike the response of the cherry. One feels all this as soon as one attacks the log.

Some wood seems so kind and friendly when you handle it; so anxious to give as little trouble as possible. The oak is like this. And if you can get a woodman to talk to you about his craft, his face will light up when oak is mentioned, for there is nothing quite like oak! So easy to cut; so easy to burn, even when green; and so delightful to smell when it is burning!

On the other hand, one comes upon wood that seems determined to give trouble. While birch is not so easy to saw as oak, and beech is harder still, wych elm is a tough tiresome wood to try to get through, and the lime is a bad lot—woolly, and as disagreeable as wood can be! The men never have a good word to say for the lime tree. Though that doesn’t deter me from growing lime trees; the honey-scented flowers are so ravishing in summer. And so say the bees.

Walnut, they will tell you, is not very good for firing; it goes so powdery. And though they know and appreciate the commercial value of the wood for furniture, they also look at it in relation to domestic use. The men in these parts have had to keep their home fires burning with forest wood for centuries. Our “Free Woods,” which the people of this parish have the right to cut for home consumption, were granted to them over six hundred years ago, by Edward III. Even then, they claimed to have had the free use of the woods “from time immemorial”—it says in the statutes, and they have been using the wood in their homes ever since. They know all that is to be known about the characteristics of the various trees.

Beech is hard, one of the best woods for burning; hot and highly inflammable, and, like oak, it can be used as soon as cut. But no use for gate-posts as it is—they warned me, when I wanted to use a hefty, newly-felled tree trunk for one of the innumerable gate-posts, that are always needing replenishment. It is too liable to rot, if exposed to damp. But if protected with oil, or other preservative, it becomes very hard and durable.

I like to talk with people who have read deeply in Nature’s own book. First-hand information is so useful. And to study the trees at close quarters, is to learn so many wonderful things that would never enter one’s head when working in a city office.

To look at the clean birch bark, as it shines among the darker boles of the woodland trees, is to discover that the tints of pearl are not confined to the jeweller’s window. Try to paint the bark, and one finds that in addition to cream, pink, fawn, dove-grey, dark brown, black, and patches of green, there is a pearly iridescence in the silvery portions that defies one’s paint-box!

Though I feel affection for most trees, there is one which I have never learnt to love!

For a downright snaggy villain, I know nothing to beat the Araucaria, or Chile pine; commonly called the Monkey tree. From first to last it is a nuisance; and I’ve a claim to speak, for I’ve had plenty of experience with it, having inherited specimens as a legacy from previous owners in three separate gardens. And each gardener who has had to do with them has been violent in his denunciations—to say nothing of the poetry expended upon them by the Head of Affairs, when trying to clip a hedge beneath their swaying, painfully pointed, octopus-like tentacles.

I’m sorry to dislike any tree; but the Chile pine has so many faults. It affords no sort of shelter, and birds avoid it. The vicious points to its scale-like leaves can do real damage to the hands, and in some cases have caused poisoned wounds. The tree is prone to disease; and though there is something very striking about its formation and symmetry as a whole, it is weird and uncanny, and always looks an alien, out of place among our British trees.

Probably it is of definite use in its own country, since nature never seems to work without a plan. But here, at any rate, it is a decided misfit.

One large specimen, about fifty feet high, was entirely blocking a magnificent view, and in consequence had to come down. But literally it was a problem to handle, owing to the cruel way it hitched its claw-like branches into the men’s clothes, and heads, and hands. But they got it down at last, all but ten feet of it, which was left standing and intended as a support for an American Pillar Rose. But though the rose started to do its duty, after the quick-growing, wide-spreading nature of its species, it suddenly turned pale, lost its leaves, and nearly died outright. It could not stand the peculiar resin in the bark of the tree trunk. The tree had, therefore, to be stripped of its old bark—a nasty prickly job! Then, the rose had no further objection to its company.

But this is anticipating—as the old authors used to say! We really had only got as far as the felling of the monster tree. To continue:

When finally it was laid low, denuded of its fearsome branches, and the big trunk cut up into eight-foot lengths, it was as heavy as lead, and took four persons to haul what two could easily have managed had it been oak.

The logs were left to season in an out-of-the-way spot under an out-of-the-way hedge. But the branches seemed inclined to monopolise the whole of the hillside! Unless you have been similarly blessed with a big Monkey tree, you can have no idea how the branches spread themselves out when cut down—and not only spread themselves out, but curl up, and rise up, and twist around and smite you when you least expect it.

Altogether horrid things!

As I didn’t feel like giving over the whole of the premises to them, something had to be done. A bonfire seemed the reasonable remedy. But they knew better! Even with thick gloves on, it is difficult to pick them up; and when we tried to pile them up to make a bonfire, they either slid off or wriggled off; stay there they would not.

Then Abigail suggested the kitchener. We women felt we must do something, if only because we had assured the men they could safely leave us to deal with an easy job like the branches, which would enable them to get on with the sawing on big trunks. I noticed they seemed quite willing to be relieved of those branches!

We got hatchets, and chopped off a few inches from one wicked-looking branch in order to experiment in the kitchen. It nearly set the chimney on fire, it blazed so astonishingly! Obviously we could only use small chunks indoors, and one at a time. Whereupon my friend, Virginia, calculated that it would take us to 27th April, 1982, to burn the lot! And in the meantime the inhabitants would have died of the smell.

It truly had an abominable odour!

In the end, the branches were chopped into manageable portions, and the bonfire blazed for a week; everyone taking a turn as stoker.

That was four years ago. The sections of the big trunk have remained beneath that hedge, and have nearly disappeared beneath the ferns, brambles, ground ivy and stitchwort that have risen up with gentle fingers to hide the scars and cover up the wounds, and generally clothe with beauty the poor despised logs that nobody wants.

There are times when Nature seems almost to pity her downtrodden children, so tenderly does she deal with their misfortunes, so beautifully does she lay them to rest.

I sometimes think that close contact with forest trees develops in one an added sense or instinct for Nature: the trees seem to satisfy that unspoken inner longing for something—we know not what—that dates back into the dim ages, far beyond our knowledge. The trees are part of our life’s need. They were friends of man in his primeval age. Shelter and warmth were among his most urgent necessities. The forest supplied both.

They are more than useful commodities, however. They are alive. Their movement is one of their charms. They are strong, and so independent of man. And they are poignantly beautiful, no matter what the season.

In our own land, where magnificent forests have been standing for centuries, we do not sufficiently appreciate our blessings. We take no public cognisance of them. We have nothing that exactly corresponds to the Japanese festival of the cherry trees. Neither do we make an annual pilgrimage to the woods, as do the Danes to-day when the lovely beech trees of Denmark are just unfurling their leaves in spring. Yet we have scenes quite as beautiful. No country in the world can show fairer woods in spring than our own. Only, we need to look at them with clearer vision. We need reverence, when we tread the woodland ways.

A friend has been staying with me whose early years were spent in a vicarage on the edge of a forest, where trees were the children’s chief companions.

She was most proficient in the way she helped us and handled the wood. I noticed that she touched it with an appreciation showing plainly that a lichen-covered branch of an apple tree was something more to her than a stick for firewood. I commented on this.

“Yes!” she said. “We children learnt to love the trees; father used to teach us so much about them, even in his Bible lessons. And among other things dating from that period, I have always cherished his belief that when our Lord planned to be born on earth, and to undergo so much suffering and privation and humiliation, the great Fatherly Love decreed that His Well-beloved should have one comfort—congenial work. And that was why Joseph the carpenter was chosen for His foster-father. It gave Him the opportunity to handle the beautiful wood of the trees.

“Once when I felt so sorry for the poor little Boy Jesus, I said: ‘I suppose He never, never got any toys?’

“But my father immediately replied: ‘Perhaps not toys such as we have now; but I think He must have had some very happy times, playing with the clean chips and shavings in Joseph’s work-room.’”

And then my friend added: “I’ve loved chips and shavings ever since.”