Tree following

I love the tree-following concept, as invented by Loose and Leafy, but have come to a following very late this year. It's not that I didn't know which tree I was going for, but that I haven't been able to get a decent photo.

This one isn't great, but it gives an idea; the problem is that my oak is more a sapling than a tree. Just a twig really.
It doesn't really register on my camera's auto focus and becomes bashful when faced with a camera - seemingly disappearing into its surroundings. But now it has tiny, new copper-coloured leaves and looks a bit more like a tree-in-the-making.
One boundary of our garden is a proper Pembrokeshire hedge, which I'd guess dates back to a time when it surrounded a field and there were no houses in the area. It's an earth bank that's about waist height into which hedge shrubs were planted, in the Pembs way.
Those shrubs (or their offspring) are now massive, contorted old ashes and the hedge is full of gaps. With ash dieback in mind I've been putting new plants into the gaps using any self-seeds I can find - a mix of hazel, holly and blackthorn.
And, since February, my tiny oak. I came across it last summer growing in the middle of a patch of grass that was growing long and spared it from the strimmer.

Their are no oak trees close to us, so how my little tree got where it was is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps the acorn was part of a food cache hidden away by a squirrel or a jay. 
Oaks are great trees for earls (or oligarchs), but I don't really have the acreage for one, so it had to move. Then it occurred to me that an oak can be cut and re-grow just like any other hedgrow plant. It now sits in place up on the hedge bank and is a 'followed' tree. And, so far, it seems to enjoy the attention.     

Light relief

Not much sign here of the early-early spring heralded by The Guardian. Certainly it's proving to be a weird winter, but I wouldn't write it off yet.
Over the last week I've been doing hedge surgery. Any bit of ash that's big enough will be dried and end up in the wood-burning stove, but there's still a mountain of brash to deal with.
And it has been growing as blackthorn and hawthorn has been added to the pile. It is a job that has been done in half hours now and again between showers, when there have been showers.
I can't say I've seen any evidence of buds swelling and there aren't snowdrops showing yet. Too cold and too wet here.
This afternoon a brighter spell tempted me out to the hedge to carry on with the project, only for the rain to come back with a vengeance. But along with it came an incredible rainbow, lifting a day that has otherwise been devoted to completing my tax self-assessment form (which is a barrel of laughs).
Of course, by the time I'd got my phone out of my pocket and turned it on the moment had passed; the rainbow was fading rapidly. I might have been better off looking for its end - a crock of gold would help with the tax bill.

Dog's life

There's still no sign of anything happening with my 'followed' tree. The topmost buds of nearby ash trees are swollen and ready to burst, but my hedge ash is unchanged - unmoved by what looks, smells and sounds like spring to me.

But there's a lot going on around it. Hawthorn is coming into leaf and, around the ash's roots, the dog's mercury now has flowers. They're rather modest flowers and, so I read, have an unpleasant smell - not that I can detect it.

Dog's mercury is really a woodland floor plant, but a strip of it grows along the base of our garden hedge. Once the ash is in leaf it's an area that is nearly as shaded as the woodland floor would be.

I don't usually give it much attention, but as my tree was doing nothing I thought I'd read up on dog's mercury and now know that it is dog's mercury because it was said to be fit only for dog's.

Which is probably a good thing as it is one of Britain's more dangerous plants. Fit for dogs, dangerous to humans. The 17th Century herbalist Nicholas Culpepper said of it: 'There is not a more fatal plant, native of our country, than this.' Not one to pick up on any foraging expedition then.  

Hedging my bets

After a lot of thought I've picked my follow-tree. A difficult choice to make it was too. I've plumped for a garden tree because I can visit it every day and have also gone for one that is usuallyoverlooked.

And the winner is... an ash that is part of our boundary hedge. Our garden is long and thin and slopes steeply, with the house at the top and this hedge is as far from the house as you can get.

I've looked at old maps and the house has been here since at least 1880 and this bit of hedge pre-dates it. Over the years it has been pruned back and it has been laid, so my tree is short and barrel-chested and has thick boughs that grow sideways from its trunk. It's like a mature tree that has been put on its side.

I cut it back pretty radically a couple of winters ago, so it has lots of growth from last summer coming out of it hedgehog-style, upwards and sideways.

Plenty of ivy growing on it too with a few berries that the blackbirds have left uneaten. No sign of the ash buds fattening up at the moment. But on the bank below things are happening; snowdrops are in bloom and the delicate shoots of what I think is dog's mercury are just starting to push through the soil.