Yesterday, Saturday 13 August, I took my first ‘Cantaloupe de Charantais’ in for chef Marco. Looking back through my diary I see that I sowed them on 28 March and built their frames, transplanting the seedlings to their 50l pots in May. March 28th to 13 August; just shy of five months from seed to first fruits. Whenever I’ve talked melons with Marco, his question has been the same, ‘English melons – will they be sweet?’. I’ve replied with my finest gallic shrug and expressed my hope. ‘Will they be sweet?’ is a different way of asking, ‘Will summer be hot?’. It is not a question I can answer until September and then in the past not future tense. Last year, 2021, had a cold and miserable August even by British standards. My tomatoes were the worst in my twenty-year career; those that survived the blight had little flavour. My cantaloupes soldiered on. As young plants they are cold sensitive, but once established they seem quite resilient. The melons ripened eventually in September and October but they moved very quickly from ripe to over-ripe with that slightly unpleasant petro-chemical aftertaste. This summer has been hotter – at times problematically so. On Friday, I needed to spend the day in the glasshouse sowing the seeds of the bitter leaves – the endives, radicchios, chicories so beloved of chef. Increasingly beloved of me too as not even the pigeons seem to eat them. Voles do love ‘Grumulo’ though. In full, Cicoria ‘Verde de Grumulo’. I planted some seedlings out and the little furries ate every last one of them, and all my dill. I digress. Even with the shades fully down and the doors open at each end, the glasshouse was a constant 45Celsius all day. Outside it was 32C.

When I watered first thing on Friday, I had noticed that one of the melons had dropped from the plant and was held suspended by the net I had placed around it, lashed to the cane above along which I had trained the plant. In every other year I have grown my melons on the ground which is undoubtedly easier. But, having a spare bench with some height above it, I thought the theatre of a climbing frame with melons hanging in the air would be worth the effort. So it has proved. I was disappointed by the loss of this first fruit as the point of the net is to stop such drop, or so I thought. The outside temperature had been over 30C all week though, so I wrote it off as prolonged heat-stress. Cantaloupes are supposed to have shade in temperatures over 26Celsius. This cannot be for the plant itself as the maximum recorded in the glasshouse, before the shades were fitted, has been 55C. Cantaloupes are also known as Persian melons, although a friend has just told me that they originated in Armenia. In that part of the world, 26C is a spring and autumn temperature. My conclusion has been that the shade inhibits the fruit dropping, splitting or even cooking. The dark shading at 5 o’clock on the one pictured is not bruising, but it may be the shoulder which faced the sun. I resigned myself to cutting up this first failure and feeding it to the hens. There are twenty more melons on the three plants. There is hope.

When I returned in mid-afternoon for the second watering, I was brought up short by the scent of ripe melon – the unmistakable musk of the cantaloupe – musk melon is another of its synonyms. Muscat melon? There had been no hint of it at 7am. I took a knife and halved it, smelled deeply, then cut a slice to taste. Without question, the finest melon I have eaten in England.

I walked it down to the House and presented it to my sceptical Italian. Marco didn’t even need to taste it, the smell was enough. He declared it ‘buonissimo’, very good and, ‘the perfect size’. I love melons but they are so often overwhelming. This one fitted perfectly in the palm and was indeed the perfect size to feed two people.

Cantaloupes are not the only fruit. I have water melons too. A small variety called ‘Mini Blue’, an F1 hybrid. The plant was supposed to be compact and to require just one square metre of space, but that was a myth. The fruits should be in the range of 0.9-1.4kg and as a litre of water has a mass of a kilogram and melons – water, cantaloupe or other are almost entirely water, I can judge how close to maturity they are both visually and by hefting them. The largest two have reached the bottom of the range. If we have have three more hot weeks these water melons will be on the table.

I garden in the Cotswolds. There could be a frost within the next three weeks.

A kind friend has enlightened me on how a melon was named ‘Howling Wolf’. It has very little poetry to it. Cantaloupes were first grown in western Europe at a papal property in Lazio called Cantalupo, presumably because wolves were abundant in the area and wolves do like to sing.

Pumpkins enjoy a soft bed and a hard pillow. Before I planted mine back in May, I tipped an entire barrow-load of bulky organic matter – in this case spent mushroom compost – spread it to an area of around 3’x3′ or a square metre and dug it deeply into the soil. Into each of these squares, I planted one of my pumpkins. I am growing ‘Marina di Chioggia’, ‘Red Kuri’, ‘Delicato Ibrido F1’ and ‘Rouge vif d’Etampes’. I puddled each one in with a full watering can of water – 2gallons or 10l depending on your preference.

And, being busy, that was as much care as I could spare them for the next six weeks or so, bar the intermittent weeding of their lush bed. We have now had an extended period of drought and the temperatures have been good, even excessive at times. Two days of close to 40Celsius would stress plants at any time, never mind after drought.

The pumpkin vines have spread 10’/3m on their main stem with side-shoots of two-thirds that, nonetheless. In the morning, the leaves are like beach parasols, but as the heat of the day increases and the available water diminishes, they close their leaves like umbrellas after rain, trying to conserve as much moisture as they can. I make time to give them a can of water each. The smaller vines of the ‘Red Kuri’ and ‘Delicato Ibrido F1’ will re-open their leaves within half an hour or so. The largest may not until evening and that suits me fine as once their leaves are open, the rate of transpiration – the flow of water through the plant from the roots and out the lenticels of the leaves – increases again. I don’t necessarily want that; I would prefer the plant to be as hydrated as possible. When cucumbers become stressed they become bitter – much like people. When pumpkin plants are stressed they abort the pumpkin. I have lost a few small ones this way which grieves me. I see it as a failure even though every day and throughout every day, I triage the needs of everything under my cure.

The soft, manure-rich bed into which a planted my seedlings is supposed to hold moisture. I tend a walled garden on a roughly south-facing slope. In the bed below the bottom wall I have pumpkins planted also, but these are in un-improved ground. The plants are in full sun throughout the morning and in shade through the afternoon. I have watered these less too, in part as they are furthest from the water-supply, and in part because they exhibit less of the water-stress of the others. Indeed, they are doing almost as well as the ones I cosset.

Once the pumpkins had set well, I sought out clay tiles for them and eased them under the swelling fruit so that they can ripen without contact with the soil. This is the convention.

I wonder.

As a wild plant the pumpkin would not enjoy such consideration. Perhaps it is only necessary in the UK, a temperate island maritime climate where rain is expected, especially in spring and, more importantly, autumn when the pumpkins should be ripening. Perhaps it is a function of selective breeding to have larger pumpkins, and cultivation methods which work towards having fewer, larger fruit rather than many small ones. Even cultivated pumpkins make their own arrangements if possible.

For the second successive year I am growing pumpkins close to a line of espalier apple trees which lie to the west. For the second year running, the pumpkins have found the trees, climbed them, set fruit in them. Last year I found a ‘Rouge vif d’Etampes’ 6’/1.8m high. It makes me ask some questions. Are the pumpkins the Celts of the vegetable world, always chasing the die-ing sun? The presence of the espaliers is accidental if so. I planted my pumpkins in a situation anticipating that they would grow southwards, seeking the longest direction of light. They grew east to start with, seeking the dawn. It wasn’t convenient. And now they set their fruit in the west.

I don’t think it is accidental that the pumpkins have found those trees. I have other climbing plants in pots beneath a wall with support provided. Some of them have reached out – that dreaded phrase – and found their own supports. The growth tendrils look speculative to begin with, but the results suggest some sort of awareness of the presence of other plants, some kind of intent, some form of consciousness.

Left to their own devices, pumpkins don’t choose hard pillows, but lift their babies off the ground – they prefer a hammock. This year a ‘Rouge vif d’Etampes’ (pictured) has climbed the nearest apple tree. At this time, the pumpkin is around 8lbs/3kg in mass. I will find the time to keep its mother well-watered in hope she aborts no more. The vine runs on, climbing higher. There is a flower and the promise of another pumpkin suspended in the tree at eye-level. Strange fruit.

Elsewhere in the garden I have ‘Trombe d’Albengo’ planted beneath orchard trees. Despite the drought, I still hope to have these long curled courgettes hanging from the branches of cherries, plums, and pears. Gardens are serious, significant creations, but that doesn’t mean they have to be humourless.

I have been a professional gardener for over twenty years. It has been a great life. I love gardening for many reasons, one of which is because there is always something new to learn. I wasn’t expecting to learn that aubergines go to sleep.

I have grown them under cover either in a glasshouse or a poly-tunnel and my engagement with them has been during the working day which is typically 8am-4.30pm, although there have been years such as 2018 when I started earlier, took a siesta, finished later. It was a rare year; snow at the end of March then, a fortnight later, temperatures over 20 Celsius which endured day and night until mid-September. 2018 was my most successful year for growing aubergines which love consistent heat. I had chosen a variety called ‘Prosperosa’ which produced fruit the size of a small melon – perhaps 1.25l in volume, perhaps even as much as 1.5l. I am growing it again this year, in hope. Without hope I wouldn’t garden. Gardening feeds my hope.

There is something animal about an aubergine fruit, or berry to be precise. I use the word ‘fruit’ in its biological rather than culinary sense. In culinary terms the Yorkshire position is the most reliable: fruit can be eaten with custard. The firm warm skin of the aubergine, its turgor. I imagine dolphins have a similar texture although I’ve never touched one. Aubergines aplenty. The plant itself is rather beautiful which is why this year I have one in my sitting room. The stem and petioles are purple, as are the veins in the leaves. The flowers will be a lovely lilac. There is the promise of fruit.

I think ‘Prosperosa’ is only moderately spined, but as the plant matures I will find out. Already in my poly-tunnel I have a different cultivar (pictured) whose leaves have thrown out thorns above and below. The stem is barbed as is the flower-bud case. \

Last night I watched the aubergine in my sitting room lift its leaves vertically so that the plant closed in upon itself, like a dog curling up to go to sleep. This is something I have never seen before. It was slow like watching a clock face. At no point did I see movement, but over an hour it moved all the same. It was open, then it was closed.

SOLANACEAE, the family to which it belongs, is a little crazy. It includes Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, tobacco, potatoes, aubergines, tomatoes. Plants of the old world and the new. Some of the most important global food crops and some of the most toxic plants in the world. To complicate things further, some parts of the plants are edible, others poisonous – only the potato tubers are edible, the rest of the plant isn’t. At university I had a vegetarian friend who wouldn’t eat aubergine as she considered it too high in nicotine. The seeds of the aubergine has a coating of nicotine, which is what gives the flesh its bitter flavour. I consider the risk too low to consider worrying over. I love baba ganoush, aubergine and chickpea curry, moussaka.

I was thinking of Constantinople. I spend a lot of time thinking about Constantinople – it is an idea which fascinates me. Constantine moved the capital of an empire and in so doing bought that empire a further 1100 years of life. I learnt recently that it was almost moved again in the seventh century to Carthage of all places. The Roman Empire fell eventually in 1453AD. In 1492AD a territory once governed by the Roman Empire, having conquered similar forces to those which had defeated the Imperial city, sponsored a sea voyage to find a different route to the spices and riches of India and Serendip to the one which had been closed by the fall of Constantinople.

These events are 39 years apart – a human generation – a complete epoch of human history. Time is relational. Constantinople belonged to the ancient world not because of its continuity with it, but because it ended before the world was re-shaped. Its population may have had a dish called Moussaka, and that dish could have contained aubergines, but it would not have been made with potato, tomato, or chillies.

The plants which the Iberians brought back from the New World have been far more valuable than the gold they plundered. Tomatoes, chillies, sweet peppers, potatoes have enriched the diet of millions for centuries.

When does the garden year begin and end? I have never found an answer. Perhaps, simply, the garden year begins and ends in some little ways every day of the year.

When I was training as a gardener and being taught the principles of design, it was with the language of music. Borders were to have rhythm and harmony. Now that I am mostly growing vegetables, gardening seems quite percussive. There are beats I need to hit such as the planting of the First Early potatoes or there won’t be notes or music later in the year. I live in fear of forgetting to sow something then to realise only when it is too late. Earlier this year, I had two failed sowings of parsley. It is a slow germinator at the best of times and by the time I had decided each sowing had failed, weeks had gone by. Chef was starting to use up the plants from last year and would soon be looking for more.

The importance of hitting the beat at the right time was brought home to me again this year. I had sown my courgettes at the beginning of the right period for courgette sowing only to have tired courgettes sitting in pots in the glasshouse. The days were bright, at times un-seasonally warm, but the nights were still cold and I couldn’t possibly plant them out. They have been in the ground for ten days now and I finished the week of their planting feeling that I had that beat at the right time. Likewise I had planted out the pumpkins, sunflowers for cutting, and some Cosmos ‘Purity’. Two nights ago the forecast was just for 5C overnight. I drove into work in the evening and covered my courgettes with cloches. I could do nothing for the runner and Borlotto beans which are now an unpleasant shade of yellow. They are still alive and they will pull through, but they are a picture of misery.

I have a poly-tunnel full of tomatoes, aubergines, basil, coriander, sweet and hot peppers – ‘Padron’, ‘Cayenne’, ‘Corno Rosso’, cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes, and an intriguing little thing like a hairy cucumber called a Carosella. I have grown them before but not this variety. It should grow to the size of a Syrian hamster before being eaten. I have been shutting the tunnel doors at night and opening them in the morning so that the tunnel can air and those all important pollinating insects can enter. There has been a little too much air or cold air, at least. The Carosella nearest the door may not pull through.

I suppose that hitting the beats is not simply time-specific but place-specific too. I am gardening in the Cotswolds – an area of land with an average height above sea-level of 500′ and about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in England. Summers can be hot, gloriously, continentally so, but only July and August are guaranteed frost-free. Patience is needed when planting out, despite the lengthening days.

The tomatoes in the tunnel remind me that the ‘right’ of ‘right time’ is not set in stone. I had sown my usual favourites at the usual time: Beefsteaks to cherries, yellows, reds, ‘blacks’, plums and round. Their names are like poetry: ‘Principe Borghese’, ‘Crimean Black’, ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’, ‘Yellow Pear’, ‘San Marzano’, ‘Red Cherry’, ‘Cuor de Bue’, ‘Black Cherry’, ‘Piccolo Dattero’. Like the courgettes, these were starting to grow tired in their pots, not because it was too cold for them to go to the tunnel, but because I had inherited crops which were lingering on and ‘bed-blocking’.

I had fielded a late request from Chef for a particular variety of tomato from Sicily, ‘Marinda’. In Sicily it is grown outside from January to April hence its other name ‘the winter tomato’. I sowed ‘Marinda’ a good six weeks after the others. It was ready for the tunnel when the tunnel was ready for it and is now just as mature as the others.

I have a south-facing wall in the walled garden and have planted one of each of the ten varieties against the wall as an experiment. I’m particularly interested in ‘Marinda’. Will an Oxfordshire summer be as benign as a Sicilian winter? I fear not.

Tomorrow, I will harvest the last of the rhubarb and the first of the strawberries, but I don’t know that yet. Nor did I know that ten days after cloching the courgette plants against the cold, I would harvest the first courgettes.

Summer begins.

Edgworthia chrysantha:

What is in a name? Everything, nothing, something inbetween? Are any of us anything without our stories? Only time will tell, but I suspect the answer is no.

The species chrysantha is the easy bit. The first part chrys is from the Greek for golden. Not xanthe, that means yellow. A subtle and not so subtle difference. John Chrysostom was the golden-tongued, golden-mouthed theologian. His writings are eloquent, although his logic at times is questionable. I had an argument once with someone who had called their daughter Xanthe, who claimed it meant golden not yellow. You can guess the rest. I won’t call the moon the sun in any situation. The antha refers to the flower. And yes, these golden flowers are flowering now and will until the end of March or even into April. The one pictured is in the garden of Twickenham’s Town Hall, Greater London.

The Genus, Edgeworthia is superficially straightforward. It was named in honour of an Anglo-Irish amateur botanist who worked for the East India company in the Nineteenth Century. These days he would be cancelled – too colonial, imperial, white, aristocratic, as if he could help his birth and context. Not even God can change the past. I can only assume he discovered the plant between the months of December through to March as it is entirely unremarkable when in leaf and not when in flower. Winter is its season when the flowers form and blossom on bare stems. It fills the air with scent and, although entirely unrelated to Chimonanthus praecox, Wintersweet, the flowers share a character. The scent drifts on the air, it is fizzy like sherbet, it is enticing the same insects perhaps? Moths, probably. Not much else is flying in the cold months. It entices me every time.

It has a synonym Edgworthia papyrifera and a common name ‘paper bush’ which point in the same direction. Its bark fibres have been used to make mitsumatu tissue in Japan and in combination with other plant-derived fibres to make washi and Japanese bank notes.

Traditional medicine has used the roots and flower buds to treat eye disorders and the bark and roots have anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. How many millions of plants did our ancestors eat through to discover those which killed and didn’t kill, those which were detrimental or beneficial? We walk in their shoes.

The plant itself will grow to 1.5m/5′ high and wide. It enjoys full sun or partial shade. A soil which is free draining yet moist, a soil rich in organic matter. It is intriguing rather than pretty and hence difficult to include in a planting plan.

Conditions are perfect for digging. It is cold, the air is 3 Celsius, but not frosty. The sun is gaining strength in a cloudless sky. I can work in short sleeves as is my preference. The moisture level of the soil is optimal – neither too dry nor too wet and I can dig without damaging its structure.

I am preparing a border for re-planting. Yesterday, I lifted all the plants which were not required and disposed of them. Today, I lifted a Magnolia stellata and a Viburnum opulus ‘Rosea’ which will be replanted in the garden but elsewhere. Replanted once I have washed their roots thoroughly as they, in common with the waste plants are riddled with the roots of another plant, Calystegia sepium, common bindweed. As I dig the now bare border, I can feel the thongs of it break on the tines of my fork. I become avian, stooping to pick out the smallest worms of the long white roots. I have seen it re-grow from a piece as small as 1cm or 3/8″ from as deep as 30cm/12″, such is its vigour. It is not a huge border, 1.2m/4′ wide, 12m/38′ long, but I fill two large buckets with these roots.

I suppose most gardeners have their favourite plants and their least favourite weeds. I always tend to have a shortlist. It is not that I am indecisive, I just appreciate context. Setting aside the Victorian monsters – the Japanese knotweed, the Rose Bay Willowherb, the Giant Hogweed (I bear the scar of this one), I think my two least favourite weeds are creeping thistle and common bindweed. They share vices. Both reproduce sexually, via seed and asexually by the roots. I know that as I dig and break the roots that every piece I create and leave behind will grow into a new plant. The border has a brick path on one side and a lawn on the other. The roots disappear beneath each. I can bury a membrane on the path side which might stop regrowth, but that isn’t viable on the lawn side. And then there are the seeds.

Like so much of gardening, this digging is a tuition in humility and reasonableness. I know I will not extract every single piece of root and yet I must try to remove as much as I possibly can. Some might call it futile, but I guess you understand why Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill, or you don’t.

We have a plan. The border will be replanted with espalier apple trees, centrally placed. After that until autumn, any re-growth of bindweed will be dug out or treated with a translocating herbicide – one which is taken in through the leaves and stems, then moves around the plant even into the roots. Only then will we plant spring-flowering bulbs and something herbaceous for summer. As the border is long and narrow simplicity will be best. I’m recommending Narcissus ‘Thalia’ for the first and a Hemerocallis such as ‘Gentle Shepherd’ for the second. It should be lovely.

In winter, any sign of life or growth is comforting, however understated. It is the season of the evergreen and of those that flower or berry even more so.

Few are as subtle as the silk tassel bush which bears an abundance of pale silvery green catkins, usually from December onwards into January and February. The shrubs are dioecious, that is bearing male and female flowers on different plants. The lesser seen female, at least in UK gardens, is known by its clusters of dark berries in summer. As a student, the only Garrya of interest was the cultivar ‘James Roof’ whose catkins can reach 15″/30cm in length. Its other common name, feverbush refers to its use as a quinine replacement and general febrifuge.

Although is is native to the coastal mountains of California and southern Oregon, it has thrived in British gardens, being relatively hardy (can stand a frost of -10), pest and disease free, and of little interest to deer and rabbits. It has the typically litoral leaf, glossy and hard, which makes it well-suited to coastal or exposed sites.

If desired as a shrub, it is best planted in a sunny or partially shady position where it can grow untroubled by secateurs or hedge cutters to its natural extent of 13’/4m tall by the same wide. It can be a useful hedge, and being evergreen provides a reasonable windbreak and sound dampener all year round. Obviously, the necessity of keeping it as a hedge will limit its ability to flower. As we are not the only species to enjoy a garden, it is worth noting that its dense habit makes it an attractive nesting proposition for birds. If the open season for pruning begins after flowering, it must end with the nesting of birds.

It is often planted as a wall-shrub and pruned into a straight-edged block or left to form an unattractive blob. These can be renovated over a couple of seasons by pruning a percentage of stems to ground level. It is a pity it is treated with so little ambition as it lends itself to being trained as an espalier or fan. And, although I have never seen it so used, if it can be an espalier or fan then it could be trained to form an evergreen tunnel into which the silvery tassels would hang. Or perhaps trained like the hornbeams which line the allees at Versailles – tall hedges no more than 1’/30cm wide. In gardens we are limited by the nature of things, our resources, and our imaginations. The first we must accept as there is no point arguing with the world. The second we can work to increase as opportunities permit. But let our imaginations be free.

Winter is the season of the evergreen, carrying life and hope through the darkest months of the year. The Cedar of Lebanon I have in mind, the one which is pictured, stands on the west lawn of Cornbury House, the property of the Lord Rotherwick in Oxfordshire. It is a suitably aristocratic association. Having first been mentioned as present in England by John Evelyn in his magnificent ‘Sylva’ (1664) they became the ‘must have’ tree on English estates especially from the 1770s onwards. I caught sight of my tree yesterday whilst driving. Its crown rose above the deciduous trees in front of it in a way which is not noticeable when they are in leaf. Perhaps it was a trick of the winter light as it seemed to tower over the adjacent mansion too. It is home to a pair of ravens who fill the garden with their calls. Last year I watched them carry a nestling crow to feed their own brood. It’s a dog eat dog world.

Cedars of Lebanon are suited to an extensive lawn as although not a giant of the arboreal world (130’/40m being their limit), they do throw out their arms widely; thick arms of immense weight which join the trunk close to the horizontal. I am often amazed by the strength of trees. It is not a tree for a town garden, but then, few trees are, sadly. Or perhaps it is the opposite – few town gardens are suitable for trees.

Although Lebanon names the tree, in part due to long association – it appears in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh, they are native to Cyprus, Syria, and southern Turkey also. They were so highly prized in the ancient world that the Roman Emperor Hadrian (ruled AD117-138) established a reserve to protect them. As cedars can live for over two thousand years, it is possible that saplings of Hadrian’s time are still with us today. They were valued as a building timber and for furnishing. The wood was burnt in rituals of purification and the Egyptians used an oil derived from it for embalming.

I have a tabletop and benches made from barn-seasoned planks which were gifted to me by friends – one of their cedars came down in a storm many years previously. When the table was delivered, the whole house filled with the essence of the tree and remained fragrant for a month. I have left the surface untreated except for a light oil and intend it to be a repository for memories – every red wine stain a testimony to friendship and hospitality, of dinners enjoyed with glasses of Chateau Musar form the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon: a perfect convergence. Once a year I will sand it lightly, certainly not enough to erase the memories, just sufficient to raise the scent of the tree.

Plants have no regard for the human calendar, but it is the first day of a new year, 2022. It is 16 degrees Celsius, 61F or, in other terms 25% warmer than much of August. I am in Buckingham, of the shire, England. Beneath my feet, bulbs are emerging from the sward: snowdrops, winter aconites. In the neighbouring garden a song thrush is singing a song of territory and courtship.

The apple tree I am pruning, a ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ only lost its leaves in the week before Christmas. There have been a few decent frosts, but year on year the frosts migrate into the early months and the not so early. Last year, April in Oxfordshire saw 25 days out of 30 frosted, and snow in the middle of the month. It was a killing spring. Mature rosemaries died, Magnolia grandiflora turned an unhealthy shade of yellow. The grass of the deer park looked as if it would never start into life. Frosts were followed by bright sunny days coaxing the plants to life and cold northerly winds in contradiction, killing that life. There was little a gardener could do – we work with what we are given, after all. We are not gods, no matter how often we achieve the seemingly impossible when asked.

The apple in question has not been pruned properly in many years. Strong vertical branches thicker than my calves rise from the bowing crown seeking the sun. The tree was not fruitful last year and the late frosts were not to blame. The garden slopes and the cold air flows away to the Great Ouse river. I spend hours on my ladder with my bow saw, cutting with one hand and bracing the amputation with the other. Tree surgery. In the purest form.

When I have done as much as I feel is possible for one year – I don’t like to send a tree into shock – I clear my mess on the ground. I trim the laterals from the limbs with a billhook which resembles a Dacian sword. It is just as effective, travelling down the limb until it meets resistance which it removes. The limbs, the branches, I saw down to 2’/60cm lengths for outdoor burning in the summer months when the days and evenings may be colder than this winter’s day. I stack the laterals, the straight twiggy wood into a bundle, a faggot. And I have a thought which is the sort of thought which leaves me feeling dull for not having thought it before. In historic times, gardeners would light bonfires in the orchards at nightfall, to warm the air and raise it, so protecting the apple blossom from frost. Apples flower in May. The fires needed to be slow-burning but reliable. Seasoned apple wood makes great fuel. But what better to light these frost-fires than the prunings which keep the trees fruitful – the wood is thin but moist, it burns quietly, steadily. One tree has yielded sufficient prunings for fires on many nights.

I am impressed again by the joined-up agriculture of medieval Europe. Of most of the world even today come to that. They understood their world in a way which we don’t and our lack of understanding is what threatens sustainability. Our sustainability. Our viability as a planet. It is not technology, although it is, but not as the conversation has considered so far. It is that we cashed in the credit of millions of years of carbon, of plant growth, in order to try to live outside the system of the organic planet. To return to the orchards – they needed heat and fuel for future yield. The fuel which provided the heat was produced by the right management of the orchard. It returned nutrients to the soil in the form of wood ash which helped maintain the cycle. The fuel was there, provided by the trees themselves. Such elegant efficiency.