Yesterday we officially declared our victoria plum tree dead. Killed off by last summer’s drought. It will be replaced by two trees in a slightly different position. These we will potentially purchayse this afternoon after a second attempt to return Lee’s scarifier. Always assuming anywhere will be open. Pennells Garden Centre would have been the obvious choice but they are a deeply religious lot there and are shut for the day.
The death certificate was issued after cutting a small branch to examine it for signs of life. There was no greenwood to be seen. We do have another, smaller, plumb which has flowered and therefore warned us that the health of the older tree was not as it should be.
The smaller plum was purchased as an unlabelled stick for a pound from some shop with no idea as to what would eventually grow from it. It is a small miracle that said stick even took root and sprang into life. Plants can be very resilient.
Twill be a few years before the stick will yield usable quantities of fruit and the planting of new trees must be seen as a medium term investment.
Today is Easter Sunday, the Feast of the Passover or Spring Break, depending on your nationality and orientation. It would be a real shame if the use of the term Spring Break ever became the norm in the UK. Nowt wrong with Easter, especially as we get two bank holidays yay.
I am minded to make the day totally job free. Our family does have form in this space. My great great great great grandfather the Reverend Daniel Davies of Llandysul was excommunicated from the local Baptist chapel after it was discovered that he had let his farm hand work on a Sunday. They relented a few years later and let him back in to great relief all round. It must have created quite a stir at the time.
I visited his grave around ten years ago when I was researching my family tree. It was one of the oldest in the cemetery and the gravestone was starting to deteriorate. At least I have it photographed.
Not got back any further than Daniel who was born in the middle of the eighteenth century.. Church records from before that time are somewhat incomplete and we Welsh unhelpfully did not have surnames in those days so it is difficult to spot a relative even if the record is there. I will revisit this some day.
I do mean to write a family history some day as it mirrors a lot of what was going on in the world in Wales over a couple of hundred years. The move from farming during the industrial revolution to owning woollen mills and then coal mining with participation in the religious revival movement thrown in for good measure. It was only because of the religious nature of my ancestors that I was able to trace them in the census. In Wales there are Davieses everywhere but only a few of them were labelled as ‘minister of religion’. One of my cousins, William Davies was the first Welsh Baptist missionary to die in Africa.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Leisure time beckons.