THE BURNING OF THE LEAVES

So our Government has a sense of humour!!!

Their advice to gardeners to burn their ash leaves because of this fungus is just as stupid as imagining there is anything we can do to stop the spread of die-back.

We have at least ten mature ash trees in our garden, especially in the wild woodland area. Burning is as ridiculous as thinking I could collect the leaves in the first place.

If the plague reaches us as I suspect it will I will, also, not be burning the wood, well, not immediately. No doubt I will have to get a fellow who fells to take the trees down. However the wood will be logged and stacked for the wood burner. By the time our trees become victims the disease will be endemic, if not already. So, I pray that our lovely ash are immune knowing they will not be. They provide us with welcome shelter from the prevailing winds and, though the come into leaf last and drop first, I much prefer them to the sycamore that seems to get eberywhere.

Now to other things like rushing out into the garden between the rain and the rain.

The two thornless hawthorns came and have been planted and staked. I hope they will grow to form an arch over a strip of grass leading down to the lower lawn.

 This year’s wallflower seedlings have been munched to almost nothing but I have noticed last year’s are magnificent. Wallflowers are really small shrubs and, if looked after, will flower for a year or two or more. Last year’s crop are now two feet tall and bursting with promise.

At the moment I am writing this as an excuse to come out of the garden. Some plants are dangerously invasive and I have been trying to extract Japanese anemones from a rose bed. This has proved impossible and I am sure bits are left to reveal themselves next year - then I will have to do a second weed.

Into the hole where the anemones were have gone the lilies from last year’s big pot.

Next to the outside table, on the paved area by the house, I plant a big tub with lilies so we can enjoy the flowers, bask on the scent and get the pollen all over our clothes. What lilies - for myself there is only one - the gorgeous Lilium regale, ten in a tub.

There is some discussion as to whether they should be potted up now or in the spring. The idea being that, in the spring they will not have had to survive a winter. I have found that, if you plant them deeply, there seems to be no problem - and was none in the two hard winters we had.

When I was dumping the barrowful of anemone roots in a distant corner of the garden - they may survive there and will not be a threat I found the old golden autumn fruiting raspberry canes I had also dumped a few years ago and they had fruit. A bit sour but really raspberryish. It is just that my head cannot get around the colour and R does not like them so they are, affectively, a wild surprise.

Had my break - must go into the garden and pick up all the ash leaves - see you next spring!