Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew

Ah yes, Dr Seuss. It’s amazing what things go through your brain when you are planting trees. I was thinking of the rhyme from Fox in Sox as I worked away at my massive tree planting session today.

I usually have entertainment in my ears while I work. In fact I had just loaded up the history of the Borgias onto my mp3 player and was all set to be entertained and educated when the earphones died.

So I was forced to chant childrens’ rhymes until I came inside to change my listening device.

Suitably armed with someone else in my head, I was back to work.  Three apple trees in the sloping bank of the orchard went in; one cherry and one hole for the next cherry when I pick it up.

Two plum trees planted, three stonking blackcurrants into the new hedge area. (I couldn’t waste all that fantastic topsoil.)

Anything else? Oh yes, three Gertrude Jekyll roses into the planters in the courtyard.

I tell you I was a planting machine.  And some of the spots were tricky. I decided to put one of the mirabelle plum trees on the upper side of the top road; close to the top vegetable garden and opposite the new hedge.  We need roots to stablise so many areas after the flood that this looked a likely spot.

Except that a colony of stinging nettles had got there first.  So back to the house for the washing up gloves (the only thing impermeable enough to resist the ouch of the nettles, still annoyingly green and dangerous even though it’s December) and out they came.

Pulling up roots is so much fun. But not half as much as getting a new fruit tree into the ground.

By around 3pm I ran out of trees and shrubs. So I mooched about deciding what to do next.

Paying attention to a clingy cat seemed to be on the agenda. He followed me about all day. Supervising every planting project. Such as shame is he useless at anything constructive. Apart from being fetching of course.

I have decided to plant up some hornbeam trees in front of the house where the wall came down.  I have added more soil and paced out the distance. Eleven trees ought to do it.

And boy will I be glad when I can get some grass seed sown. It looks so forlorn and bare right now. And erosion prone. I do miss that beautiful wall with its 55 thyme plants at perfect weeding and cutting height. Never mind. In a decade or so I might stop minding.