Spikes in our Garden

We are now past the second anniversary of moving into our current house, an appropriate time perhaps to look back over what we have done in that time, what changes we have made to both the house and the surrounding land. But then as I look back over previous blog entries I realise that I have spent the whole period doing exactly that! I also note that I have mentioned some of the garden plants we inherited with the house and moaned on various occasions about the spiky nature of so many of them. We have gorse, bramble, mahonia, wild roses, strawberries, holly...the list goes on. But did I mention, I wonder, the most tenacious plant of all, one that has spikes that all the others must be insanely jealous of, one that has stems that resist all human efforts to snap, one that has strong roots which spread out from each bush to emerge nearby with innocent looking green shoots, only later becoming spike ridden? I am, of course, referring to prunus spinosa, the blackthorn.

Some might be thinking now of the fruit of this shrub, the sloe. The tough skin and the single seed within means that this is a drupe, not a berry, and it has a sharp, astringent flavour if you are ever foolish enough to try to eat it. (I did also read that the seed inside contains cyanide!) Not that this is particularly relevant to us since the bushes living in our garden have yet to produce a single fruit. What they do have though, in spades, is the most incredibly tough thorny spikes that you will ever meet. These things stick out randomly from every stem in such a way that they soon become entangled with the adjacent stems and the whole plant becomes one large ball of flesh-tearing horribleness should anyone get too close. Each smooth surfaced thorny spike is long and straight, black in colour with remarkably strong sinews inside, such that it cannot be snapped from the branch from which it has emerged; no matter how it is bent it will simply spring back into shape. This same strength is present throughout the whole plant and remains even after it has been dug up and ripped from the soil. Because of this the plants have long had a practical use - fencing in cattle to prevent them from roaming.

Fortunately we are not completely overrun with blackthorn although it has found a home in one corner of our garden in particular and has spread its roots pretty thoroughly there. We tried to ignore this for nearly two years, during which time we were focussed on tackling the many other thorny plants, but eventually the time came when we decided we could not let the blackthorn spread any further. So on went the body protection - thick leather gloves, boots and a tough jacket - and we gathered together the appropriate garden tools to tackle the job. The nature of the plant, which can grow up to six metres tall, is to produce a tangle of branches within which other less well armed plants can hide. Removing these unwelcome plants (many would refer to these as weeds) is almost impossible without serious injury so tackling each shrub is a major gardening enterprise. 

In order to gain access to the base of the shrub to cut any of the stems the surrounding low level branches must first be removed. These are, of course, riddled with thorns so a pair of long handled loppers is maneuvered in past these, with some difficulty as the spikes are tough enough to push back even this gardener's weapon of choice. The cut must be made straight across the stem - too much of an angle and the stringy sinews will remain connected - and once a branch is cut it must be pulled free from the bush. This is the dangerous part since every part of the cut stem has thorns and these are tangled up with the rest of the plant so that considerable force is required to rip it free. It is at this point that the quality of those thick leather gloves will be tested fully and any weakness exploited by the thorns as they resist being separated from their home plant. I should have mentioned here that summer, when the blackthorn's own leaves hide everything from view, is not the time to tackle the plant, although in winter a cut branch once removed should not be left lying nearby in case it is trodden on.

The thorns can penetrate the soles of rubber boots and even tough shoes can fall victim to these weapons. I extracted the tip of one particular little beast (and no, it was not a nail) from the sole of one of my gardening shoes. It was firmly embedded and stabbing my big toe.

Despite all these hazards we do eventually manage to cut each bush down to ground level. Getting the roots up would be nice but so long as we cut off each new shoot as it emerges in the Spring we hope that eventually the last signs of life from these plants will disappear. At this point, after applying the relevant first aid to all our scratches, we now have a heap of spiky branches and twigs to deal with. These we cut into smaller pieces and squash, carefully, into our garden incinerator, an old and rather rusty dustbin shaped thing with a chimney in the lid which fits on top. It is at this point that I can reveal the inherent weakness of the blackthorn bush; it burns remarkably well. Getting the fire started wasn't easy, I admit. A small amount of liquid accelerant poured over the tangle of twigs inside the incinerator was needed to get things going but then, suddenly, the flames shot skywards and I stepped back as the heat built up. The surrounding damp grass was soon alight and after no more than thirty minutes the whole blackthorn tangle inside the incinerator was gone, every last spike had been reduced to a small pile of white ash and we could relax in the knowledge that we had at last defeated the beast.

How such a plant as this evolved is hard to believe. I can only imagine millions of years of being attacked from all sides by creatures with sharp teeth, beasts with such a passionate appetite for those berries that they were willing to sustain endless injury to their bodies in order to get at them.

Sailing again

Anyone old (or sad) enough to have been following this blog from its infancy back in 2008, when we were just a short way away from retiring from jobs we had worked at for the previous forty years, will know that boats, and particularly those with sails, have been a part of our lives for many years. We have owned a succession of them, large and small, and although there have been short periods when ownership of our own boat did not suit us, they have never been far away from our lives.

Eun na Mara, our little 'Cornish Shrimper', came into our lives in 2016, her beautiful tan coloured sails delighting us and attracting smiles from anyone who happened to glance out to sea as we sailed by. But a question has arisen recently as to whether owning our own boat still has a place in our lives. We have changed the location of our home, introduced electric bicycles into our lives, and we are now getting involved in other activities, which is why the boat is not getting used as much as she used to. It is a big decision for us to make but yes, we have decided the time has come to let Eun na Mara go. We can no longer justify keeping and maintaining a boat of our own when we are getting so little use out of her. Having made this momentous decision we begin to realise, however, that finding a buyer might not be quite so simple as we would hope. She is as sturdy and strong as when she was first built, but selling such a vessel from the fairly remote corner of Scotland where we live, at a time of year when most sailors are hanging up their sea boots for winter, could well take some time.

So we'll just store her away under her winter cover and await developments.

But why not move on and talk about sailing itself as an activity. Not owning our own boat does not necessarily mean the end of sailing as an activity since we do live beside the sea and our village does have an active sailing club. We watch the activity from our house every Friday evening when an enthusiastic group of youngsters take to the water in Toppers, Lasers, Optimists and even the odd Enterprise. [For the uninitiated, these are all types of sailing dinghy.] Then one day we joined a local 'Beach Clean', another bit of volunteering, an event organised by a group of locals who, like us, are concerned about the amount of litter that the sea throws up onto our shores. It was here that I began chatting with a man called Angus who was full of enthusiasm about adults making use of the sailing club dinghies for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, something that had not happened before. Was I interested? Well yes.

My first short outing with them was on board a 'Topper', a single sail dinghy more suited to small children than a clumsy, fully grown adult. I was delighted to find that despite the wind blowing at about fifteen knots I was able to keep the boat upright and zoom to and fro across the harbour entrance for a couple of hours. The borrowed wetsuit I had struggled into kept me warm enough although the spray coming over the bow as my little boat crashed into the waves soaked everything I had on, bringing me to the obvious conclusion that I needed to rethink my clothing if this was to be a regular activity. Getting the suit on had been hard enough but the difficulty I had removing the wetsuit after we came ashore left me exhausted and out of breath, ramming home the same message even harder. So after a bit of research online and a small investment my own wetsuit arrived, but sadly after trying to pull the thing on I had to admit that it was too small and needing to be exchanged for a larger size.

A few more Sunday mornings have now passed, the first of which gave us complete calm, not a ripple of breeze on the water and no enthusiasm from anyone for sailing. My new larger wetsuit has arrived and as I squeeze myself into it to see whether it does actually fit I am beginning to wonder whether this is the right time of year to be starting a new hobby. The winter months have always been a sailing-free period for us, a time when routine boat maintenance and other postponed jobs get to be done so that we are ready for the following year's sailing season. Another Sunday morning arrived as a sunny day, mild for the time of year, but with a large shadow hanging over the day. The Met Office have issued an 'Amber Warning of Wind', predicting gusts of over seventy miles an hour in our area, something which was hard to believe at first but as the day progressed, each hour brought stronger and stronger winds. The storm even has a name, Ashley, a strange modern practice introduced to make them sound more cuddly and friendly. I peer out across the harbour to see whether there are any dinghies being launched, having already made my own decision...all is quiet at the sailing club...so my new wetsuit stays dry indoors. More weekends come and go. It was always unlikely that small dinghy sailing would feature much as winter progressed and with the strange weather we have been having of late things are not looking good. I stand ready should the right weather happen to arrive.