In the nebulous few days between Christmas and New Year I broke the spell of inertia and spent a day getting back up to speed in the fruit garden. With the light slipping behind the wood on its furthest arc and wintery incarnation, it becomes hard to see the detail by three in the afternoon, so a day of pruning is a measured exercise from start to finish and the measure in the day is a gentle way to reflect upon time.

I like to finish once I have begun a task and it is impossible to rush the detail of unpicking and then reassembling the end of year tangle of pruning and retraining the climbing berries. The tayberry is the more vigorous of the two plants that mark the beginning of the soft fruit garden and I wonder as I work what would become of this plant if it were left to layer itself as it touched down to form a great colony. A birthday gift layering was how our plant arrived from my friend Jane across the way and we love the tayberry for its tart, juicy fruit, which reflect its hybrid parentage, the summer raspberry and the blackberry, which follow on neatly once the tayberry goes over. Its neighbour, the ‘Oregon Thornless’ or parsley-leaved blackberry is always pruned second, for its stems are brittle and I want to know I have the measure of things before making a start.