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.     

Indian Summer

It came, it went. We had one beautiful day of September sunshine yesterday and it was heavenly. A single world-weary small tortoisehell spent all day in the sun on the iceplant and there was a comma on the ivy that covers the old apple tree.

Comma (Photo: Tim Bekaert, Wiki Commons)

The comma had that mint condition new look about it as though it only just emerged. In the bright sunshine it looked so vividly orange that I decided I needed to take a photo, but of course by the time I had camera, memory card and batteries there was no sign of it.
It did get me to spend some time looking at the ivy and the dozens of flies of all kinds that were buzzing around the flowers on the sun-warmed side of the tree. There were so many of them that it really underlined what an important part late-blooming ivy plays at this end of the year.
I also had a look at my 'followed tree' for the first in a while. With hindsight it wasn't a good choice because you have to sight your way through nettles to get to it.
Hidden away in the vegetation the cut end of ash looks more than ever like the head of some sort of animal to me. The minotaur, maybe.
It's leaves are still mostly green, but they are starting to show signs of change. Brown spots are forming and leaf edges are curling.
And throughout the day there were swallows feeding over the valley. When I went into the garage after dark there was no sign of the last lonely fledgling that has been roosting on its own in there for a week or more - hopefully it joined up with the others and is now on it's way south.
 

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.