Ashes to ashes

Chalara fraxinea: doesn't sound too ominous, does it? It's a fungus. And the clue to the problem is in the second part of the name: do you remember the Fraxinus excelsior here last June? The beautiful ash, the reticent, the reluctant. The tree that comes into leaf last, allowing all sorts of spring and early summer bulbs and flowers to bask in the sunshine below, spreading its canopy later than any of its companions in our native forests. The ash plays a huge part in our culture too - many of the holy trees around the island are/were ash. It was one of the Seven 'Nobles' of  the Wood in early (Brehon) laws. Hurleys are made from ash. Ash trees with their pale silver bark (often with a thick coat of ivy) and nubbly branches form an intrinsic part of winter hedgerows. The airy heads feathered with fresh green compound leaves light up those same hedgerows in the early summer. 

And now this tree is threatened by a fungus that has finally reached this and our neighbouring island from the mainland of Europe. 90% of ash trees in Denmark have succumbed. It was first identified in Poland in 1992 and has spread across the continent and onto its western edge within just twenty years. The places where it  has been identified here are small new woodlands that were planted with imported young trees--Trojan horses carrying destruction within. Those plantations have been destroyed, but really it seems only a matter of time before the disease turns up elsewhere. I don't remember healthy elm trees which were so much a part of our landscape, but I do remember their bare skeletal remains standing out starkly in green hedgerows: a ghostly reminder of the reality of the Dutch Elm Disease I learned about in the classroom. How sad to think that the same might happen with the ash.

June Ash, Fraxinus excelsior

November Ash, Fraxinus excelsior

Compound ash leaf from a healthy tree falls to the ground 

But onto other things.

Winter has arrived and the birds are a more noticeable part of the surroundings now. Izzy came almost nose to beak with a heron in our local stream one morning recently, I'm not sure which of them was more surprised. The same stream provides a stopping point too for a Little Egret, gleaming white against the duns and ochres of the fading plants on the banks. Robins are pouring their songs onto frosty air again; wrens are trilling and ratcheting in the brambles and bushes; darks drifts of starlings whirl against a pale yellow sky. Izzy chases hooded crows and gulls off the field in the morning, some of them almost as big as herself. A swan brings grace to the Grand Canal. Although the season is officially winter, the local sycamores and beeches glow bright yellow and copper in the low morning sun.

November Beech (Fagus sylvatica), glowing still

November Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), brightens the park

Grand Canal swan

A friend sends me a pic of November strawberries in Dublin 4. And my aunt in Westmeath, in her ninetieth year, lets me harvest grapes from her polytunnel  and shows me her winter onions planted out in raised beds she made herself. Not bad!

November strawberries, happy in Dublin 4 (thanks for the pic LB)

November grapes, all the way from Co. Westmeath (thanks CM!)

Have a good week all.