Ashes to ashes, part III: A sad day

 

Goodbye, old friend - one last sunny day

It has been the dominant feature in the garden for the 30 or so years that we have been here, and presumably for long before that; it has provided shade in summer, some protection from easterly winds, autumn leaves for leaf mould and a perch for innumerable birds of many species – but the big ash tree in the field just beyond our bottom boundary is now gone, as of yesterday.  For some years now it has been slowly dying, presumably of ash dieback, and we had been advised by two different tree surgeons that it needed to be removed before it was brought down by the winter gales.  Now done.

The tree, and the field, belongs to the Big House.  They have had a forestry company in to deal with all the sick trees on their land, and the forestry guys agreed that this one had to go.  For a couple of weeks they’ve been working over near the church, and this week have got round to felling the three affected trees in the field – ‘ours’ (it wasn’t really ours, but we felt responsible for it, it was so much a part of our garden view), a slightly smaller ash a few yards along, by our neighbours’ boundary, and an even smaller one at the far side of the field.  Interestingly, a large ash next to the latter tree appears to be healthy.  We had expected that the tree would be dismantled bit by bit, but basically they tied ropes to the main branches, tied the other ends to a tractor, cut almost completely through the trunk and drove the tractor across the field (fast) so that the whole thing went in one go. 

The final cut

"Timber ...".

A shoulder-high stump has been left standing, and the main part of the trunk and a few of the larger branches are being left to lie in the field to rot down, so there will still be some benefit to wildlife, which is a comfort - better than turning it into firewood.  But sadly the pigeons, flock of goldfinches and other birds that sat in the upper branches in the late afternoon to catch the last of the sun’s warmth are going to have to find somewhere else to sit; the highest remaining trees, the hawthorn and maple behind the summerhouse, and the plum tree, are fairly high but still don’t catch the sun in the same way.  And their trunks are slimmer and less attractive to the woodpeckers, nuthatches etc that like to poke around in the crevices.

Talking of birds, the tree-cutting and subsequent wood-moving over by the church may not have been to the liking of the waterfowl on the small lakes nearby; one of the moorhens took to visiting our garden (for a bit of peace and quiet?) on several days. 

A moorhen visits

Big empty space

There’s now a big empty space down on the boundary; a better view, certainly, but it will take time for us to get used to it.  We intend in due course to plant something big (an oak?) to take its place, but the soil is shallow and I need to be sure first that we can prepare a big enough planting hole.  Maybe next winter, once our period of mourning for the ash tree is over.