The Long Grass

[That's not me in amongst the brambles - see below for explanation]

The grass had been left too long for this to be an easy cut, but a recent Sunday came when the rain had stopped and there was an unfamiliar heat coming from the sky.  By mid afternoon the lawn was still covered in dew but this was about as good as it was going to get for the final cut of the year.

The flymo didn't much like the soft earth, it juddered and scraped into it with every forward thrust, gauging out a furrow.  But it also succeeded in cutting away the long grass which was the main aim.  An opportunist robin searched for insects and worms several yards from where I was working, always in the corner of my eye or behind my back it dodged my gaze with brilliant cunning.

Once I was done, I carried the freshly mowed grass to the edge of the garden where the previous grass had become a habitat for beetles and worms.  A cloud of midges hung over the debris and I emptied the bag of compost over them.  They scattered for a while and then reformed exactly as they had been before I arrived. 

I noticed that the brambles had hidden themselves among the rambling border and sent several barbed tentacles through the domestic plants.  Tangling themselves deliberately through the desired inhabitants I wouldn't have noticed them if they had kept to the border and not created a tripping hazard across the path.  One job leads to another when you start on a garden.

The brambles

You couldn't rip out these great arms of barbed vegetation with your bare hands.  They needed handling with leather gloves and cutting away at the base with a razor sharp instrument of some kind.  I used a kitchen knife, though I know we have some secateurs somewhere, but they've been eaten by the house like everything else that is, on rare occasions, extremely useful.

I worked my way back down the tentacle of thorns to find where it was coming from.  Deliberately the plant had positioned itself in a crevice beneath a broken stone of the leaning wall.  Digging out the root system wasn't going to be easy, in fact it wasn't going to happen because I hadn't planned on this job anyway.  So I cut and pulled at each of the tentacles and removed them as near the base as I could get.

The longest of the brambles I had removed was about seven feet long and its stem was about a half an inch thick at the base.  I folded it carefully up into a half circle half ball as it snagged and tore at my clothing.  Then I shoved it beneath the hedge and watched it unfold like a still living things.

Brambles have achieved in Hawaii what the Japanese Knotweed has achieved in this country - the status as a ferocious and invasive weed, smothering and killing local crops.  The story is a familiar one, the plant was introduced for ornamental reasons and its favoured crop of blackberries, but it has no natural enemy in an environment it didn't evolve in.

http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/hortweeds/index.html

Yew & Me

Looking up into the Yew Tree I see the berries hanging like droplets of blood on the evergreen.  And I remember my Grandad telling me how the berries are poisonous.  His voice still comes back to me after all these years with varying kinds of advice.  In fact, most of the Yew Tree is poisonous, including the wood, bark, needles and seeds.  It was used to make arrows during the Middle Ages and even if the arrow caused but a flesh wound, the unfortunate recipient would still die of poisoning.

The birds have been consuming the berries in large amounts today.  Foraging up in the branches and down on the ground where some have dropped following a windy night.  They seem to have no problem with the poison and simply eat the berries whole.  The seed passes through them intact and the rest of the berry is digested.  I guess this is no accident, as the tree benefits from spreading its seed far and wide, and the birds benefit from a fruit that nothing else can eat.