Ruby&Ruch

We decided to create a circle in yew.  Large enough for us to sit in, or for one person to sit in and contemplate whatever it is they want to – to mediate, or pray or simply enjoy the space.  
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, 

Withdraws into its happiness; 

The mind, that ocean where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find, 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that’s made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Andrew Marvell

We used the money I was kindly given as a leaving gift from work, for 36 yew plants, (we bought a crab apple ‘Golden Hornet’ as well, that is in the potager).

So we had the plants over the summer and they were irresistible to a certain puppy dog who loved nothing more than tearing around the garden with one in his mouth, pulling apart the roots.  Although we moved them to somewhere dog proof they were in small posts and dried out really easily, and were desperate to get them in the ground, which we did do in October when the weather turned from scorching.  But all we were able to do was delineate the circle by me standing in the middle with a string and John walking around me with a can of spray paint.   We needed an entrance to the circle and decided to put a ‘baffle’ in front of the entrance, so that it was private.

Aaaaaanyway…months later and the little yew plants are becoming completely submerged by the grass and weeds around them.  Here is one almost submerged:

So on Friday we decided to excavate all around them and put a thick layer of compost on to suppress the weeds. God but it was hard work. We only did half the circle and some of that we had had a go at previously so were not starting from scratch but it was exhausting. Each spadeful of weeds weighed what felt like a ton and had to be dug down and prised unwillingly out of the ground. Each spadeful of compost had to be unloaded from the trailer and put into the barrow and wheeled over. Each sod we lifted out was carried over to a dent in the field and laid down to compost.

We only managed just under half of it when we collapsed in sweaty heaps – early March and 20 degrees in south west France

So you can see the semi circle and the plants nicely mulched.  Next week we will finish it off.
‘A green thought in a green shade’