The winter always seems shorter for the winter work. The tasks that mostly lie beyond the garden and are out of sight and out of mind in the growing season. Our orbit shifts with the land laid bare and we venture down to the stream again where the silvery water shimmers in light falling through branches and the nettles have retreated to ground and allow us once again to get to the water. The down season tasks in the areas where we deliberately exercise a lighter touch are rougher and readier than the detailed work in the garden, but there is always a long-term outcome in the heavier work and the land always gives back if it is tended with care.

When the poplars were at their most laden and weighty, two of the vetarans came crashing down to spread their length across the stream. One we heard, with an explosive crack, on a perfectly still day in August. The slimmer of the two, it fell nimbly amongst its companions to strike a fence post like a hammer, gathering up the tension in the wire so that we couldn’t open the gate to the crossing. The second tree, not so very far away and the bigger of the two came down silently, its enormous limbs pressing themselves into the soft earth, taking out a hornbeam and whiplashing my grove of young alders. It was almost impossible to make our way to the bridge over the stream for the carnage of broken limbs and weight of vegetation, so we left it until November when the garden demanded less, and time felt apparently in our hands.