Bo’s been. Our cut trees and large logs are resting carefully off the ground by the hungry woodshed. Our dividing hedge has been trimmed to the neighbour’s satisfaction.
Bo left the middle silver birch he’d said should go. ‘I didn’t need to take it,’ his woodsman shorthand for the tree being healthier and happier than he first thought. We’re happy, too.
He ran out of time, so the far corner work will happen some time over the winter. There is no time now to cut and split the wood into logs. That will be warmer work for colder days. So we concentrate on the meadow.
It is time to cut the long autumn grass and yarrows back. I unearth countless mole hills. There are signs, too, that deer and badgers have been, so there appears to be coexistence.
We mow, we rake, we barrow the cuttings away to the compost. It reminds me of my childhood. Dudley, my late foster father, is on my mind. It’s his birthday any day now.
It was us boys’ chore to rake Dad’s ever-expanding crofts. Acres of orchard and Christmas trees crafted out of fields. How we longed to escape: me to the river, Christopher to cricket.
Two full days of work and we are mostly done, the meadow now returned to lawn. The mole hill soil is saved.
Patches are flattened and sown with late grass seed. I cannot resist the allure of a hardy annual flower mix to be raked into the ‘blue bed’.
I bring in logs for autumn fires and for the girls’ visit to the apple fair. Rain scatters amber birch leaf over the fresh-cut grass like autumn jewels in the green.
We’ll return to the sharp axes for a Christmas of splitting logs. We’ll chop the next two winters’ heat. The red squirrel leaps from top to top of the new-trimmed trees. The young owls call from the wood.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
Follow Allan on Instagram @allanjenkins21
