Tree surgery

As a defender of trees, my ears are sensitive to the sound that a chain saw makes. When I heard one going this morning whilst washing up, I therefore went to investigate.

No panic: the tops of our neighbour's sycamores were being taken out. Dowdeswell Forestry Services was the name on the lorry, the firm owned by a Mr. Huggett. (What's the opposite of nominative determinism?) We used to get our Christmas trees from Dowdeswell I recall, and our three boys were at school with the three Huggetts - or were there four?

Today, I spoke to Richard, who kindly let me take some of the wood chippings to put on our garden. "Leave them a couple of months, or they'll take the nitrogen from your shrubs," he warned.

I put fresh shavings round the plum trees last year: perhaps this is why we had such a poor crop.

The Victorian age

Our friend Terry Murphy once told me of a question put to him by Tamara Talbot Rice (the then widow of Caroline's cousin David, the Byzantinist). Tamara never lost the art of rolling her Rs, having been born (before the Revolution) of Russian parents.

"Do you suffer from the tyranny of fruit?" she asked, making "tyranny" sound like a cat's purr. Well, our Victoria plum tree is weighed down with fruit this year, and it's not a time to be away from home. Each evening I run the gauntlet of the local wasp population in order to pick the plums that are ripe. And end up with red fingers from stoning the fruit. Caroline is already asking whether she has enough room in the deep freeze.

The deal as we arrived here was for builders to come and erect a bungalow at the rear of our house: they yanked out an old apple tree in order to provide the driveway. The best investment I've made was planting our two plum trees to take its place.