Once I was famed for the beauty of
my hands, but I suspect my days as a hand model are no more. The hands that
launched a thousand ships are more those of a forty a day Capstan full strength
man. That’s what stoning 30 kilos of damsons does to them. The mind is equally
scarred.
And afterwards ? Dealing with the trees
themselves. It seemed churlish, the harvest being so generous and bountiful. We had
friends picking them, gave even more away, and still they came down from the
trees. You squelched, as though treading grapes, as you walked through the
garden, the grass struggling to poke up through a carpet of damsons and squelch.
Still, however bountiful, we had to
reclaim our garden from what is now a small army of rampaging damson trees
Sunday was the day before the
damson Armageddon. It seems so peaceful sitting on the small patch of
dishevelled garden we could still call our own.
Little did the trees know that the chainsaw, mask and gloves we’d
ordered had come the following day.
So serene, I almost felt sorry
The following day we struck, and I
imagined the damson trees killing themselves laughing as they saw me approach,
skidding over squashed fruit and squinting through a B movie horror mask.
Laughter was replaced by guerrilla
warfare as kamikaze damsons bombarded us from on high, the ariel warfare accompanied by swarms
of erratic end of season wasps. I think Prince may have had this in mind with
his song, Purple Rain.
But now, happily round one is done.
To remind you, this particular horror had all but blocked our way into the garden, swallowing up an ornamental tree and threatening a bird table
The ornamental tree is somewhere under there. The bird table its next victim.
Our diminishing access into the garden.
A bonfire emerges
Access and ornamental tree to the right
Round
two, well there are one or two trees on borrowed time, this tall maiden for
example with its branches so high up it’s almost impossible to harvest.
And
next week the bonfire, wrapping potatoes and rosy cheeked children in foil and
throwing them into the flames, all the time drinking strong cider. (or perhaps
damson wine)
4 comments:
We need to reclaim our garden too but for us it's ivy. We're booking it in for this weekend hopefully, so if you have any damson wine left, it'll be much appreciated. We may need it... :)
Ivy, don't talk to me about bloody ivy. It's another encroaching green tide. Impervious to poison, half convinced resistant to flame throwers too it means days of hard digging and still the expletive will return
One man's curse is another woman's plum jelly.
Most weeds are welcome additions to goats or chickens, but it still requires me to harvest it for them since I can't trust them to leave my other plants alone.
We have a huge brush pile to burn. It should make a glorious fire.
We shall compare pictures of bonfires, Maria. Ref weeds, ground ivy is the worse. I'll be ages digging the damn stuff out
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