Friday, November 11, 2011
Autumn Bliss
You might think that Autumn Bliss is the name of a variety of raspberries, favoured by FIL for their size and their late ripening but which I find a bit watery and insipid.
But actually it is what you get in the leafy suburbs when your neighbours' gardeners have their leaf blowers on all morning. Noisy things they surely are. I am also less than convinced that they are worth the noise, the smell and their contribution to global warming more generally: they seem to be very slow at moving leaves about, rather slower one might think than using lawn rake and shovel. The only plus that I can see is that a blower does less mechanical damage to the turf than a rake. But is all that warm air any good for the turf either? Should I pen a memo. to the chaps in the council responsible for the chaps on the road who blow municipal leaves about?
All this comes about as I was giving a small oak tree in our garden a prune - a modest prune which I might say did not involve louder noises than those made by an oiled pruning saw. The (three in one) oil because I found that the saw bound a bit less than it might otherwise. The other trick was to cut a branch off about a metre from where it joined the trunk. That was easy enough because the weight of the branch kept the cut open and split the whole thing away- in slow time, giving one plenty of time to get off the ladder and out of the way - before you were much more than half way through. Then the stump of the branch was heavy enough to keep the cut a bit open when trimming it cleanly to the stump. Binding, cursing and sweating much reduced.
The were also ample opportunities for playing with ropes and trying out the knots that I learned about in the Boy Scouts. Happy days.
A by-product of all this is that I have renewed my acquaintance with cleaving fresh oak, a technique much favoured by Elizabethan house builders as the resultant timber lasts a lot longer than sawn. I did not really have the right tools for the job but I got on well enough with one club hammer, one wedge, one bolster and two cold chisels. Most of the work being done by alternating thrusts of the cold chisels up the branch. Or perhaps down the branch. Grain not clean enough and ends not cut square enough for a proper longitudinal cleave. One blow of the cleaver and all that.
I have also, at long last, found a use for the small galvanised iron pulleys we inherited from our naval uncle, finding them to be a great help when returning the pruning ladders to the garage roof single handed. Another activity which traditionally involves much cursing and sweating.
But actually it is what you get in the leafy suburbs when your neighbours' gardeners have their leaf blowers on all morning. Noisy things they surely are. I am also less than convinced that they are worth the noise, the smell and their contribution to global warming more generally: they seem to be very slow at moving leaves about, rather slower one might think than using lawn rake and shovel. The only plus that I can see is that a blower does less mechanical damage to the turf than a rake. But is all that warm air any good for the turf either? Should I pen a memo. to the chaps in the council responsible for the chaps on the road who blow municipal leaves about?
All this comes about as I was giving a small oak tree in our garden a prune - a modest prune which I might say did not involve louder noises than those made by an oiled pruning saw. The (three in one) oil because I found that the saw bound a bit less than it might otherwise. The other trick was to cut a branch off about a metre from where it joined the trunk. That was easy enough because the weight of the branch kept the cut open and split the whole thing away- in slow time, giving one plenty of time to get off the ladder and out of the way - before you were much more than half way through. Then the stump of the branch was heavy enough to keep the cut a bit open when trimming it cleanly to the stump. Binding, cursing and sweating much reduced.
The were also ample opportunities for playing with ropes and trying out the knots that I learned about in the Boy Scouts. Happy days.
A by-product of all this is that I have renewed my acquaintance with cleaving fresh oak, a technique much favoured by Elizabethan house builders as the resultant timber lasts a lot longer than sawn. I did not really have the right tools for the job but I got on well enough with one club hammer, one wedge, one bolster and two cold chisels. Most of the work being done by alternating thrusts of the cold chisels up the branch. Or perhaps down the branch. Grain not clean enough and ends not cut square enough for a proper longitudinal cleave. One blow of the cleaver and all that.
I have also, at long last, found a use for the small galvanised iron pulleys we inherited from our naval uncle, finding them to be a great help when returning the pruning ladders to the garage roof single handed. Another activity which traditionally involves much cursing and sweating.
# posted by Jim @ 7:29 AM 
