Ashes to ashes

The three big ash trees round our boundary are all suffering from ash dieback.  While the one next to our driveway was the least affected, it was the only one that was actually ours, the others belonging to owners of neighbouring land.  If it fell, as it probably would have done at some point, it would have landed either on our house, our garage, the neighbours' house and garage, or the overhead electricity wires that run past our property.  None of those options would have been good.  

Last day of the tree

So we finally managed to engage Michael the local tree-man to cut it down; a sad decision, but a necessary one.  It involved a very large cherry-picker to deal with the higher branches (that's the red thing in the 'before' photo).  Suddenly the view from the kitchen window is a lot lighter, and currently dominated by a very large pile of firewood; that should see us through a winter or three.  And the smaller branches produced a load of woodchip, which I'm using to renew the paths in the veg plot.

Afterwards

The stump is still there - realistically it was just going to be too difficult to grind it out - and from a quick count of the rings I reckon the tree was about 150 years old.  You can see the dark patches where the dieback had taken hold, and some of the firewood has nasty-looking bits in where the wood was affected.  The stump will become some sort of feature until it rots away; once the area has been cleared of sawdust (I can find a use for that too), I'll need to clear it of weeds and give some thought to how to plant if up.  It will now be considerably sunnier than in the past, though the tree roots mean that only the tiniest seedlings, or seed, can go in there, which limits the options.

As for the other trees, we're making noises to the owners about removal; neither of them would hit the house (just) if/when they fall, but they would make a big mess of most of the garden.  Sorry, trees - and the wildlife that enjoys them - but the alternatives aren't good either.

The volunteers

As usual, I’ve sown more seeds than I can realistically handle.  Some are still in trays, waiting to be put into their patio pots; at least I’ve managed to keep most of them watered, although I’ve had to scrap some that got too leggy or sad-looking.  Next year I really must cut back.  Especially as some plants are showing me that they can take care of all the germinating and growing on by themselves.

Panicum seedling, flowerhead just opening

I have some panicum (grass with big feathery flowerheads) and antirrhinum seedlings still not planted out; but last year’s plants of both varieties have self-seeded, and are making better growth than my seedlings, so I needn’t have bothered.  The panicum was an F1 hybrid so its seedlings won’t have come true, but they look perfectly satisfactory to me.  Last year’s sweet William plants have also seeded, and I’ve planted some of those out at the far end of the veg plot for next year; this is useful as the rather old seed that I sowed in June didn’t germinate.

Violas under the sweet peas

The sweet pea pots were re-used from last year, with the new plants put in last year’s compost and a bit of fertiliser added to give them some feed; last year there were some violas in there, to provide some colour at the feet of the sweet peas, and their offspring are doing very well this year.  Violas and pansies are great self-seeders, and there are several coming up around the garden; like the panicums, they’re the products of F1 hybrids but still often fine plants.

Another, very pretty, self-seeded viola

Last year I let my parsley plants, under the ash tree at the side of the drive, seed themselves around.  Perversely they seem to have done most of their seeding into the gravel of the drive itself.  I’ve left them there (will pull them up before they seed in their turn), especially as I haven’t got round to sowing any this year (need to do that …) and these are the only usable parsley plants I currently have.

There are also some plants that seem to have germinated from seed that never came up last year but obviously survived the winter and germinated this year; I have a couple of dill plants that have appeared in places where I sowed seed last year.  Probably also in this category is a solitary bupleurum plant.  A couple of years ago I planted out a few bupleurums – they’re good flower-arranging filler plants – but didn’t take good care of them and they died; I can’t actually remember where I planted them, but this year a single bupleurum appeared in a row of lettuces.  Apparently they need cold weather for seed to germinate, so this seed might have been hanging around in the garden for a couple of years and only been started off by this year’s particularly cold spring.  I’m keeping the plant going in the hope of saving seed from it; and next time I will try to take better care of the resulting plants!

Bupleurum rotundifolium (with lettuce)