Journal of the Plague Year 17 - The Battle of the Pyracanthas

It has finally happened. I have tackled the pyracantha menace.  It was a long time coming ...

When I had first bought the Little House I was particularly excited about the garden - I had never had one, but had read loads of gardening books by Beverley Nichols.  I was dying to try out all his ideas!

It was a particularly tragic chapter in a gardening life dominated by pain and rejection.  To summarise, my neighbours all loved tall trees with dense foliage, and nothing grew in my garden.  I spent thousands of pounds on it, but everything died.

The only plants that didn't die were ivy, ferns, and pyracantha bushes.  So that's what I planted.  They didn't grow all that well, but they survived, and provided a little green colour in the unremitting gloom on the forest floor that was my garden.

Then the incredible happened - my neighbours started to cut down their trees!  Sunlight entered my garden.  And the hitherto subdued pyracanthas thrived and reached for the sky.  Every year they grew taller and wider.  I tried to cut them back a bit, but they have up to 4 inch long spines, and my compost heap was small.

I extended the compost heap, by digging two feet into the ground and making it 2 meters long and wide, but it still wasn't large enough to accommodate all the foliage that I needed to cut down in my garden.

For years I let things slide, indulging in massive, futile, slashing orgies once or twice a year, compost heap space permitting.  Things came to a crisis this year, because I had not been able to do much last year, on account of being unwell.  The pyracanthas completely dominated the garden, strangling the damson tree, the apple tree, and even the birch.  The neighbour's honeysuckle had inserted itself into the pyracantha hedge, and connected, by means of its endlessly long vines, the birch, the damson tree,  and the apple tree with the pyracantha hedge.  The resulting matted mess was impenetrable, and pigeons used it for immoral purposes.  I harvested neither damsons not apples, and the birch looked increasingly aggrieved.  Things had to change!

So at the start of May, emboldened by the three day Bank Holiday weekend that lay before me, I donned my Japanese working skirt, turtleneck, and fleece jacket, and ventured into the wilderness, armed with shears, a small saw, and a side cutter (usually used to cut electric wires, but pressed into service, since I own no secateurs).

I started systematically at one end of the hedge, and sawed off the large trunks.  Then I wildly brandished my long handled shears, to frighten off the wildlife that was caught up in the trunk, and cut through any branches and honey suckle and ivy shoots that connected the hedge to the severed trunk.  Then I threw the trunk into one of the two open areas in the garden, and steeled myself to cut the next one.

This activity took up most of the Bank Holiday weekend, and every evening of the week that followed.  Finally I was done!

Now the real work started.  All the cut branches taken together came to about 5 cubic meter - to compost them I would have had to turn half the garden into one vast compost heap.  But there was another option - an incredibly labour intensive option.  Obviously I took it.

I processed every cut branch individually.  First I sawed off the really big side branches.  Then I clipped off the smaller branches.  Then I cut the smallest branches into 4 inch long pieces, and added them onto the compost heap.  From the medium sized branches I cut the smallest twigs, which againI cut into small pieces and added to the compost heap.  The longer branches I denuded off their leaves, which I added to the compost heap.  Then I took the side cutter, and snipped off every single thorn and spike.  The medium sized branch, now innocent of all leaves and thorns, I piled against the garden fence.  The large branches/trunks I treated in a similar way, and piled up in another place.

All this took over two weeks, including two long weekends (I had added some annual leave to the Bank Holidays) and every evening (about three hours every day after I had finished the office work).

I cannot exaggerate how proud I am of myself!!!!!  I spent approximately 60 hours (sixty!!!) snipping thorns off pyracantha branches - who does that?  A lesser DB would have ordered a large container and had the lot hauled off to the city dump.  But I am made of sterner stuff!!!!

Anyway.  Last Sunday by midday I had completed my labours.  I now had a high compost heap (about 2 cubic meters), a large pile of medium sized branches and twigs, and another large piles of large branches and trunks.

At the bottom of my garden is 2 meter high brick boundary wall.  Almost half of it is taken up by the compost heap.  The other half was populated by various oddments of garden rubbish.

I cleared the garden rubbish, and then constructed a Dead Wood Hedge Thingy.

My thinking was, since I had destroyed all those pricker bushes, which had served the local wildlife as shelter and a source of nourishment (mind you,I found no bird nests in my cuttings), I determined to make amends.

I rammed several poles and branches one foot away from the wall into the ground, parallel to the wall.  Into the gap between the wall and the poles I stashed my twigs, branches, and trunks, carefully leaving little gaps, to accommodate hibernating amphibians and nesting birds.

At one end,where the wall meets the fence,I incorporated my old bird-feeder, as a particularly luxurious nesting opportunity. I closed off two of the openings, and surrounded it by a few pyracantha branches that had retained their thorns, stacked too close for large birds like magpies, but not too close for little birds like robins and wrens.

There is a huge canopy of ivy on the wall, so hopefully it will soon disguise both the compost heap and the dead wood hedge.

I am typing this seated on my garden bench, pleased with my labours, and mulling over plans of how to repopulate the now strangely empty garden.  I want to plant flowers, and maybe some fruit bushes like currants - after all these decades of gloom I crave some colour.  Besides,the pyracanthas did provide blossoms for the bees, and berries for the bird, so I will needs to offset the loss of all the cut down bushes.

Just in case you wonder, I have retained two pyracanthas.  The one in front of the kitchen window, that shields the garden bench, and one especially tall one next to the birch tree.  I cut back of the other stems, and only retained the tallest, which reaches for the sky and looks like a tree, with a bare trunk and a canopy.  It looks a little off, but I need it for the washing line.

I add lots of photos below, to illustrate my writing.  I wish I had a polarising filter, thelight is never so cold as in the photos, and the garden, while bare, really does look very nice and inviting in the sunshine.

I am very pleased to be sitting here on my bench!

After the slaughter

Pyracantha tree

Bottom of pyracantha tree -I have since cut back the non-tree branches

Big branches

Bare wall, to soon host the dead wood hedge

Compost heap

Small and medium sized branches, sans thorns

I am watering the compost heap to encourage swift processing of clippings

The dead wood hedge

Covered compost heap, Christmas Tree, and dead wood hedge

Still quite a lot of foliage left!

View from the garden bench

Pond with fountain

Those pots contain seeds - hope they will come up!

A peaceful nook in the garden

Luxurious bird bath, 60cm across and filled with pebbles to varying heights, to accommodate different sized birds.  The lupin flower is the only one so far, I bought some plants in

Journal of the Plague Year 16 - Divide and Rule

It's the Wrinklies wot done it!

I have noticed recently that the idea that old people are ruining things for the young is being increasingly pushed during the current crisis.

Blaming the wrinklies for the woes of the young has been rumbling on for a few years, and curiously enough it isn't the 'young' - ie anyone under 30 - who are doing the arguing.  Indeed, I have discussed this with many of my young friends, and they have all dismissed the notion, sometimes offering up the same arguments I had prepared to convince them.  I will return to them later in this post.

Instead this idea is promulgated by middle aged and older folks, mainly on the right or left wing fringes of the intellectual spectrum.  Why do they do this, and why now increasingly so?  Why this mustard keenness to stab an entire generation in the back and divide the nation?  Since it is not a notion that stands up to close questioning, why is it being pushed?

With regard to the individuals who argue for it, they probably have a multitude of reasons.  A guilty conscience for having had a good and, as they see it, undeserved good life, an erroneous comparison of the past with the present, selective memory, and a desire to make a name for themselves by making inflammatory statements, have probably all contributed.

With regard to those who give column inches and talk show time to such views, I think they do it to deflect the public's attention from the real villains, and thus protect the special interests that they serve.

Corona Crisis

Take the current crisis. 

(1) It is not the old people who demanded / decided to shut down the country to 'protect the old and vulnerable' - it is the government.

(2) About a third of the young have health issues that make them vulnerable to not just death, but also serious illness that may leave them long-term impaired, from the Corona virus.

(3) The situation has been made worse by governmental mismanagement:
          (a) An NHS starved of resources, and undermined by various re-organisations
          (b) An initial laissez faire approach to the disease which allowed the virus to spread
          (c) A refusal to participate in EU ventilator sourcing project for ideological reasons
          (d) A continuing penny-pinching with regard to PPE, that has cost lives
          (e) Impoverishing the population, many of whom have inadequate housing and income
          (f) Enabling greed and selfishness, which undermined social cohesion
          (g) An ideological approach to problems, rather than a practical one
          (h) Allowing fools to occupy important positions for party political reasons

          (i) Applying different standards to Toffs & Co versus the plebs
          (j)  Complete the list with your own examples, as appropriate!

THUS, the government and its enablers are in dire need for a scapegoat.  Not just for the current mess, but even more so for the Brexit Hard Exit situation they are continuing to prepare for, in the teeth of all reason and practicality.

Since they can't really blame the EU for their mismanagement of the corona crisis (not to say they won't try), they are throwing shade on China (which is deserved but fraught with danger, since they need China as a trading partner) and on those who can't fight back - the old and infirm.

However - Before blaming older generations, you may want to consider the following

The young have always been exploited and given a raw deal.  Who do the fighting and dying in the wars?  The young.  Who do the hard physical labour?  The young.  Who risk life and limb giving birth to future generations?  The young.  Who get paid the lowest wages?  The young.  It was ever thus.

But ....  everyone who is old now was young once, and equally exploited, and usually worse.  The ancients currently in the stocks for being greedy were caned in schools, got their first job when 14, did not go to university, had no access to birth control or divorce so frequently 'had to marry' and got trapped in bad marriages, lacked many of the luxuries we nowadays take for granted (internet access, employment protection, health & safety - yes, protection from exposure to asbestos, for example, is so worth it!, all year round special foods, multiple holidays abroad, etc etc).  I could go on, but you get the point.

Instead you may want to consider WHO has always done this exploiting?  Hint - it was not the older generation as a whole.  It was those in power, who usually exploit us all more or less equally.  Just because most of those in power are older, doesn't mean that THE OLD as a group rule the country for their own benefit!

The older you get the more you have accumulated.  Seems obvious - if someone has worked and earned for 50 years their chances of having accumulated enough to have a nice house and pension are a lot higher than those of your average 30 year old.  Comparing the material circumstances of the old and young who currently live in the same country, and concluding that the young are disadvantaged, is disingenuous.  The comparison should be between what the ones who are old now had when they were young, and what the ones who are young now have.  The current young generation is better off, in my opinion.

Lastly ....  When people are young, most of them have a healthy body.  The older one gets, the harder it is to feel the joys that come from having a healthy body.  The senses dull or even disappear.  I lost my sense of smell about five years ago, and the world has become duller.  No more smelling of flowers, savouring subtle nuances of food, feeling comforted by the smells that go with favourite friends and relations.  And no more avoiding spoilt foods - I have a lot more food poisoning now than when I was able to smell things.  The same goes for the other senses, of course, and the rest of the body - what was easy and natural when one was young, because increasingly an effort and a chore as one ages.

To make up for this declining body, one has to spend money.  In my case, I throw away a lot of food that is probably perfectly alright, because I cannot detect whether or not it is safe to eat.  

When your senses dull. live becomes duller, and you have to turn up the volume, to still get some joy of it.  That is why people need more money when they grow older.

And as aging accelerates, there are medical and mobility issues, and grieving for one's ailing body is overshadowed by mourning the loss of one's relatives and friends, who drop off the perch, one by one.

Being poor is OK when you are young and healthy - it certainly was for me.  But being poor when you are old and decrepit is not OK.

I appreciate that most of the young folk I know appreciate this.

I am not, by the way, complaining - growing older is a heck of a lot better than the alternative!