Making changes – saying goodbye to an old friend

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on October 30^th 2024.

It is human nature to love a make-over – modernising the kitchen or bathroom, a different colour scheme in this room or a better patio for the garden. We are seemingly addicted to making changes to our homes.

We are making a change at Le Shack this week and we have mixed feelings about it as it’s something we wish we didn’t have to do. Take a minute and look at the following picture of our cosy cabin home.

You might find your eye drawn to the golden light that is falling on the oak on the left of the photo. The sun sets on the far side of the valley and at this time of the evening, with the angle so low, the light it projects has an incredible richness to it. I am ashamed to admit that I struggle to find the words that adequately describe it but it almost seems to soak into the bark and leaves of the oak trees around our home so that they glow. I have many mental snapshots of Le Shack that I carry around with me as I travel, an instant-access album in my head that I can flip open at any time if I need to remind myself of this special place, but it is pictures of this magical autumn light on the trees that I find myself turning to more often than any other.

You might also be suitably impressed at how green the grass is around the cabin, cleared of bracken and brambles and looking very civilised and tidy. (We still have plenty of work to do on the rest of the field but Michael is winning!) Now cast your eye to the tree that almost looks as if it is growing out of our roof, a giant of an ash tree that towers over our home and reaches high into the sky. Thankfully it isn’t growing out of our roof, but it is growing right by our back wall, and the base of the trunk is now touching the bottom of that wall.

It seems short-sighted to locate a tree this close to a building, but I suspect it wasn’t planted deliberately, more likely self-set, an inconsequential sapling, for many years a mere shadow of what it would become. Years ago there was an old forge here, but by the time the previous owner, a lady called Marthe, bought the land all that was left was one crumbling stone wall. That remaining wall was enough to gain planning permission that would allow her to have a simple wooden cabin constructed in the footprint of the original cottage. At first there was no running water, but the commune insisted she became connected to mains water. Grudgingly she allowed this to happen, but she fought back against their desire for her to connect to the grid. She didn’t want that sort of life. She lived here very simply, even more simply than we do, and the story goes that she never did apply for planning permission. It was granted retrospectively so that the property could be sold after she died. She was a bit of a rebel, or perhaps she was just being typically French, but she was a much-loved character in the area and I would have relished the chance to meet her and talk about her time here.

Now this tree is causing us problems on three fronts. The trunk will soon start pressing against the wall, there is the risk of storm damage to our roof as bits of the branches regularly clatter down in windy weather and, last but by no means least, it casts such a massive shadow that it is affecting the amount of solar power we can generate. That shadow grows longer each year and, whilst we have already moved our solar panels once, we can’t keep doing that.

We have no doubt in our mind that this tree has to come down, and yet we do it with heavy hearts. It is part of our skyline and I know I shall miss it when I walk down the track and it no longer towers over Le Shack. I shall miss watching a robin perch on the stub of an old branch right outside the kitchen window, a welcome distraction from cooking. I shall miss the thrill of a lizard scuttling up the trunk, still exotic and strange to me despite the fact that I see them every day. I shall miss it simply because it is a tree and trees are, in my view, one of the most wonderful things on the planet.

I haven’t always felt so strongly about trees. My younger self, during my twenties, spent each working day enduring the long commute to work on the M25 to then spend hours sitting in a high rise office at my desk. I lived for the weekends when I might escape for a few hours to a greener place. However those few hours were not enough to give me a real sense of connection and the need for the green spaces to be the priority in my life, rather than a short interlude, hadn’t yet taken root. Looking back on that now, I am struck by how much things have changed, not just the way I live my life, but also the things that matter to me. Perhaps you can’t change one without changing the other.

However, enough philosophising. The evil deed has now been done. Our French tree surgeon was nothing short of amazing, as you will see from the pictures below. He also loved trees, and was happy to share his extensive knowledge with us.

And now we have a massive, and decidedly daunting, pile of wood to process into firewood. Enough to keep us going for years probably.

All that remains of the tree is the base of the trunk. Our tree surgeon had hoped to take it lower, but for some reason in the past someone had put a number of metal stakes around the tree. The tree grew around those stakes, burying them deep within itself, hidden from sight until today, when the chainsaw came up against them. He tried cutting in different places, at different angles, but after blunting five new chains it was decided that the stump would not be coming any lower. Now we have a new seat from which to watch the sunset.

This tree, once it gets over the shock of being felled, will start to sprout from that base. The only way to stop it would be to drill holes into the trunk and poison it. That feels wrong in so many ways. Thanks to one of the chapters in ‘The Language of the Badger’, which explores how trees are inter-connected, I now know enough to fear that we might risk that poison spreading to neighbouring trees through the root system. Instead we shall cut down the fresh growth each year, one more task to add to our list of gardening jobs.

I will leave you with one last picture, taken from the same position as the opening shot for this blog – a before and after scenario.

It is both astonishing and disturbing to see how something that took so many years to grow, and that filled the sky when I stood beneath it, has disappeared in a matter of hours because of our decision to fell it, the palette wiped clean as if it had never existed. No-one else will even be aware that this tree has gone, no-one else will mourn it. I feel that I have been given a salutary lesson in the illusion of permanence, one that I would do well to take note of.

Next week we hope to be on the move, braving the night train once more as we travel back to the UK for a week in a holiday cottage by the water in Devon. We’re expecting a pleasant 24 degrees here in France tomorrow but we will be packing our thermals in readiness for a dose of the British winter!

See you soon.

MJ