The day started beautifully sunny and I decided it was high time to get on with the autumn pruning campaign. The fig tree is being cut back to grow against the wall, rather than to fill the front garden. Then there was the sad case of the sambucus niger in the back garden. Only 3 months ago someone was admiring its lacy foliage and colour and now it's dead. First all the leaves on the top half of the tree withered and droopped without dropping, a week or so later the lower half of the tree followed. I snipped a few bits, but it had lost the green appearance and was clearly not planning a revival. The ordinary elder tree in my neighbour's garden did this two years ago, although his other elder is thriving, still has all its leaves which are slowly yellowing, so in comparison with that, ours was a goner.
There's a lot of folklore about elders and their relationship to witches. I should apparently have asked its permission to cut it up. But as it was dead this was a bit difficult. After I'd been chopping off branches for a bit I went for a change of scene and snipped away at the clematis tangutica with the secateurs, until one handle fell off - apparently due to metal fatigue! It was sliced right away from the blade. After coffee I was back on the elder, chopping the branches into smaller lengths for kindling and so on... I nearly put my eye out with one twig, when the branch twirled in my hands and the cluster of twigs at the top turned and bashed my eye (I closed it in time). Then I kept getting pinched by the twigs in various ways, so once I'd disposed of it all, I decided to make a start on the plants surrounding the elder, which would have to come out before we could remove it. These were lightly rooted iris foetidissima but they were rather densely packed between paving stones and an old holly root. I took a fork to the edge of the clump to losen it, and found it unshiftable - I place the fork elsewhere - and felt some movement, so I leaned further on the fork and the shaft promptly snapped. I nearly toppled into the flowerbed,. When I removed the fork, I noticed it had bent one of the tines. I bought this fork for £14.50 about 2 or 3 months ago, to replace a very good fork that broke after about 20 years. Sigh.
I do not intend to suggest that I should have asked the elder tree's permission first, but a series of set backs like that could make you wonder. The unpleasant smell of the elder doesn't help.
There's a lot of folklore about elders and their relationship to witches. I should apparently have asked its permission to cut it up. But as it was dead this was a bit difficult. After I'd been chopping off branches for a bit I went for a change of scene and snipped away at the clematis tangutica with the secateurs, until one handle fell off - apparently due to metal fatigue! It was sliced right away from the blade. After coffee I was back on the elder, chopping the branches into smaller lengths for kindling and so on... I nearly put my eye out with one twig, when the branch twirled in my hands and the cluster of twigs at the top turned and bashed my eye (I closed it in time). Then I kept getting pinched by the twigs in various ways, so once I'd disposed of it all, I decided to make a start on the plants surrounding the elder, which would have to come out before we could remove it. These were lightly rooted iris foetidissima but they were rather densely packed between paving stones and an old holly root. I took a fork to the edge of the clump to losen it, and found it unshiftable - I place the fork elsewhere - and felt some movement, so I leaned further on the fork and the shaft promptly snapped. I nearly toppled into the flowerbed,. When I removed the fork, I noticed it had bent one of the tines. I bought this fork for £14.50 about 2 or 3 months ago, to replace a very good fork that broke after about 20 years. Sigh.
I do not intend to suggest that I should have asked the elder tree's permission first, but a series of set backs like that could make you wonder. The unpleasant smell of the elder doesn't help.
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