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The Copper Beech Blether
(or a chainsaw pruning!)
by Patrick
Vickery
I was hanging out the washing in the back
garden, as I do infrequently, when a woman who was walking down the road
strolled into the garden and stopped for a chat about the weather, the
state of the nation and such matters. In those days the garden was
unfenced, you see, but not any more.
 Staring
at her in some amazement I wondered if this was just a localized way of
introducing oneself to new people, or was it - I suspiciously conjectured
- simply a short cut habitually taken? After a couple of minutes of
one sided idle chit-chat over the washing line, during which my growing
annoyance was camouflaged by inane grinning, she continued diagonally
through next door's garden and casually left the premises via a small gap
in their leylandii hedging.
This incident happened a number of years ago now, shortly after we moved
into a nice little cottage with a half-acre garden in the Scottish Borders
and reminds me of another strange encounter that happened soon afterwards.
I was struggling to erect a fence around the property, a fence to keep
strange women out, the sort of strange women who wander willy-nilly about
your garden, when I spied an old lady leering at me over the Copper Beech
hedge.
She looked me in the eye, very canny she
was, and barked: "Are you married?" Well of course I was,
I assured her, even though I wasn't at the time, and this seem to do the
trick. I grinned inanely at her throughout the duration of this
short interrogation and then, looking supremely satisfied with herself,
she strode manfully down the road and out of sight, never to be seen or
heard of again. Once more I had encountered strange behaviors whilst
pottering innocently about the garden. Whatever next?
This nice little cottage that we moved into, with its half acre garden,
was our home for a number of years. It came with an untidy garden, a sort
of rambling mix of over-grown vegetable patches, a few apple trees, a
neglected but productive plum tree, grass for the children to run about
and play on and
a large area overtaken by broom, thistles, long grasses and nettles.
It was our 'wildlife garden' as we came to call it, for it was clear that
lack of money to buy basic tools, let alone hire a strimmer or a
cultivator, meant that we wouldn't be reclaiming it for many years to
come. But a messy patch
of over-grown garden can be transformed into a 'wildlife' garden by a
simple leap of the imagination of course, and so that's what we did: we
simply called it a 'wildlife garden', then admired any wildlife that we
spotted in it!
Along the western boundary of the garden we also inherited a Copper Beech
hedge, a hedge in need of some care and attention, and the aforementioned
Copper Beech hedge across which the old lady had leered at me.
During the early years I spent a lot of time on this particular hedge
until finally it
became a source of much pride and joy. Initially it was a low and straggly
thing, a bad excuse for a hedge really, over-run with ragwort, nettles and
weeds. There was even a giant rhubarb in the middle of it. But I
tended it, I shaped it, I nurtured it, and eventually it blossomed into a
fine specimen of hedging, a hedge to be proud of, a garden feature, an
horticultural achievement. I concentrated on height as well,
for I wanted it high enough to ensure privacy - and in particular privacy
from the likes of strange old ladies and nosy passers-by.
Then we went away on holiday, a Summer break in the sun, returning two
weeks later to discover that the Copper Beech hedge had lost two foot in
height. Good grief, it was two foot shorter, not the sort of thing
that you expect to happen when you go away on holiday, is it? Good
heavens, what sort of
character lops two foot off your prized hedge when you're back is turned?
After a great deal of detective work I discovered that it was Roger, the
taxidermist next door, so a few days later I confronted him as he was
putting out his dustbin.
"Do you know, Roger," I said, "some swine cut my Copper
Beech? Now who on earth did that?
"It was me," admitted Roger, tugging nervously on his white
beard before going on to tell me sheepishly that he'd chopped it with his
chainsaw. And why? Because his wife had told him to, you see,
as it obscured visibility turning out of the shared driveway onto the main
road, a problem that had been driving her 'nuts' for months apparently,
although for some strange reason they'd neglected mentioning it to
me.
For the sake of neighbourly relations I refrained from depositing him
upside down in his own dustbin, sorely tempted though I was, but instead
vowed to mutter and mumble loudly "Some swine cut my Copper
Beech" whenever he ventured within earshot.
And so the moral of the tale is clear:
"Never trust a bearded taxidermist called Roger, particularly if he
lives next door, for as sure as Winter follows Summer, or Summer follows
Winter, he'll mutilate your Copper Beech with a chain saw and blame it on
his wife."
Now let that be a lesson to us all.
(Copywrite 2003 Patrick Vickery)
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