My friend Tineke Bot has often claimed that she can distinguish spontaneously and effortlessly dozens of different shades of green. Here in Choranche, this kind of chromatic sensibility is an asset. Without it, an observer would have the impression of looking out on a world that is homogeneously green. In the case of the following photo, for example, I've played around with Photoshop settings in an attempt (not particularly successful) to get the leaves of the fig tree to stand out as much as possible against the background.
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For the first time ever, the tree is covered in figs, and they're truly delicious. This is the tree given to me by my Provençal friends Natacha and Alain. Two years ago, in my blog post entitled Great fig tree, but low yield[display], I said jokingly that the annual yield of the young tree had been one edible fig. Clearly, since then, it has evolved exponentially. They're small dark spheres, firm and sweet: the variety of figs used to produce tarts and cakes.
I take this opportunity of including a link back to my blog post entitled Fabulous fig story[display], in which I referred to fascinating biological information from Richard Dawkins concerning the fig tree.
Over the last few days, our region of south-east France has been beset by a heatwave. By the standards of my native Australia, it's probably not a particularly drastic heatwave. I just walked around to the back of the house, where there's a thermometer attached to a shaded wall, and it reads 36°. The Ancient Romans called this period of the year the "Dog Days", because the bright star Sirius (nicknamed the "Dog Star"), in the constellation of Canis Major, used to rise at the same time as the Sun. In French, a heatwave is referred to by the term canicule ("little dog"). And in English, we have Noel Coward.
My local doctor, Xavier Limouzin, advised me recently to consult a dermatologist in nearby Romans, and the lady told me, in a roundabout way, that I was behaving like an Englishman. Well, she didn't exactly say that. She informed me, most emphatically, that a fair-skinned individual such as me must never ever go out in the sun without a hat, otherwise I'm a likely candidate for skin cancer. So, I promptly bought myself two elegant Italian straw hats, and I've installed metal hat hooks on the kitchen wall alongside the door, so that I'm reminded to put on a hat whenever I step out of the house.
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In fact, these hats are part of a general "survival campaign" that I instigated spontaneously at the time of my recent clash with the trunk of a walnut tree on the slopes of Gamone. Besides hats, a fundamental element of this campaign is optimal footwear, to replace such unsuitable things as thongs, sandals, boat shoes and old boots with lots of holes but no laces.
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Those on the right are solid work boots, sold in the local rural hardware shops, for gardening and other outdoor operations. Those on the left (which I haven't even worn yet, since I bought them through the Internet and they only arrived here a couple of days ago) are specimens of the finest German-manufactured alpine boots that exist, and I plan to use them for hiking only.
By far the most annoying aspect of my new survival campaign is the iPhone, for the simple reason that nobody ever phones me through this device. So, I have to force myself to remember to carry it with me whenever I leave the house. I've hit upon the solution of these belt pouches, since I almost always wear a belt.
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Now, getting back to the heatwave, let me say that my dogs don't seem to be bothered by the high temperatures, since there's a lot of shade under the linden trees, and there's invariably a slight breeze at Gamone.
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Recently, I asked my neighbor René Uzel to use his mini-excavator to cut a wide path down from the house to the lower field of Gamone (in the direction of the Cournouze mountain).
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For the moment, it's simply a dirt ramp, which terminates at the base of an apple tree. Later on, I'll think about whether I should install stone steps.
Naturally, in this heatwave weather, the doors of the house are often open, to let the breeze in. And, silently like a breeze, Fitzroy also likes to step inside and take a look around, even if this means climbing up my old wooden staircase.
Well, yesterday afternoon, whenever Fitzroy dropped in alongside my desk, I was intrigued to discover that he was engulfed in a warm soapy aura of fruity fragrance, as if he had just stepped out of the shower. In a way, that was exactly what had taken place. Down on the lawn, I discovered the chewed remnants of a plastic bottle that had once contained almond milk shampoo. I had let it drop on the floor of my shower, and had forgotten to pick it up and stick it on a ledge.
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I don't know how exactly Fitzroy had dealt with the contents. Did he actually drink the shampoo? Or did he simply spill it on the grass and then roll in it? In any case, he sure smelt nice. His presence alongside my desk, on a hot afternoon, was refreshing.
POSTSCRIPT: On rereading this post, I'm amused to see that I purchased two hats, two pairs of boots, and two phone pouches. There's surely a reason why I've done things doubly...
At Gamone, every outside task that I'm called upon to perform must be done on my own. For example, I decided to move this old roof beam, which had been an acceptable rustic bench, up until it started to rot.
[Click to enlarge slightly]
If there were somebody here to help me, we would have picked up this rafter and carried it a few dozen meters to the place where I wanted to discard it. On my own, though, I had to be more imaginative. So, I used a pair of rollers, which made the task simple and effortless.
This is the spirit of my American hero Henry David Thoreau in his humble cabin (constructed by himself) in the woods of Massachusetts, alongside the lake Walden, whom I've already mentioned in this blog [display]. But don't get me wrong. I don't advocate living on one's own and being obliged to invent creative solutions to daily down-to-earth problems as an ideal lifestyle.
In the photo, notice the presence of an admirer of my ingeniousness.
If this photo shocks my readers, then I ask you to believe that this silly accident certainly shocked me too. But I've now overcome the trauma.
My local doctor, Xavier Limouzin, is not only an excellent general practitioner and a cultivated gentleman—who is passionate, in the little spare time he has, about exotic motor cycles and rose-growing—but he's also a senior officer in the local fire brigade, and clearly a competent photographer. (That's not Limouzin in the photo, since he was actually taking the photo… at my request.) The accident occurred a month ago [see my blog post], but it was only yesterday that I dropped in for the first time for a medical visit, primarily for my three-monthly renewal of pills. I've more-or-less got back to normal, but Limouzin has prescribed both an ultrasound image and an MRI of my left knee, which might not be recovering (?) ideally. Personally, I'm reassured that everything's fine, but I've got into the habit of following strictly the orders of Xavier Limouzin (who detected my prostate problem several years ago). I wouldn't wish to be accused of publicizing the talents of a GP (which would be illegal in France), but I've often said to myself that one of the many basic reasons why I'm not particularly interested in moving to a more civilized corner of France is that my personal medical context in the vicinity of Pont-en-Royans is splendid. And Gamone—need I add?—is a magnificent place to live, in spite of its dangers.
Concerning the photo, I should explain that the victim is totally conscious and suffering no pain whatsoever. If he's lying on his back, in his underclothes, with his arms outstretched, that's because Xavier Limouzin ordered me to get into this position. And if the victim is wearing an oxygen mask, and receiving serum in his right arm, that's because Xavier Limouzin didn't want to take any risks concerning the possible nature of my wounds. I tried to tell the GP that I was perfectly capable of getting up onto my legs and walking away from the scene, but he preferred wisely to ignore my words. So I assumed completely my state as a wounded fellow who had imagined himself stupidly, for a few dramatic instants, as an alpine lumberjack capable of using a chainsaw to cut up giant logs on the slopes of the Vercors.
I must relate a trivial anecdote that would be amusing were it not perfectly serious and reassuring. In the confusion of the first few minutes when the local firemen's ambulance was racing up to Gamone, with its siren blaring, phone messages were exchanged concerning the exact setting in which I was located. Naturally, the first thought that flashes into the minds of alpine emergency crews in a place such as Choranche is the possibility that the victim might be located in an inaccessible zone, necessitating the intervention of a helicopter. I had actually written a blog post on this theme, entitled Helicopter territory[display], just a week before my accident. Well, it appears that the nature and the geographical circumstances of my predicament had been somewhat overstated by the excellent men and women (the group included two female fire officers) who were taking care of me. In any case, at the same moment that I allowed myself (I had no choice) to be handled like a gravely-injured blob of meat, and placed delicately in a rigid cradle on a stretcher, and carried up to the house, I glimpsed the famous red and yellow helicopter hovering above Gamone. I also heard one of the firemen yelling out, in embarrassed annoyance: "Hey, somebody forgot to phone the helico to say we don't need them." To be perfectly honest, I was almost disappointed to realize that I wouldn't be leaving Gamone in an aerial fashion. But I remained constantly relieved, above all (during the long slow journey to the hospital in Romans), that I wouldn't be leaving Gamone in a plastic bag. Once in the care of the excellent medical staff at Romans (where I spent the entire afternoon in my underwear), I realized that I was traumatized above all by the image of the rolling log, and I kept repeating to myself, in an audible voice: "William, oublie l'arbre !" (forget the tree trunk). During the fortnight that followed my accident, I took advantage of the terrible series of accidents in the Tour de France to convince myself that we're all constantly on the verge of being killed in one way or another. And I chased away all my dark thoughts and images by realizing that it's a wonderful privilege to live alongside individuals such as the neighbors who heard my cries for help, and the fine emergency personnel of Pont-en-Royans, guided by Xavier Limouzin. But a helicopter trip would have been nice...
PS: Perspicacious blog readers will have understood that my decision to publish this unpleasant photo is largely therapeutic.
I don't have any photos, because it all happened unexpectedly. Towards the end of Monday afternoon, my new Gamone neighbors phoned to inform me that they were about to throw a house-warming party, and that I was invited. Realizing that I had less than an hour to get shaved, showered and spruced up for a social evening (local etiquette), I darted away to St-Jean-en-Royans to purchase a couple of bottles of wine. Returning to Gamone at about 7 o'clock, I had a single thought in mind: lock up Fitzroy in the kitchen, along with Sophia, so that the dogs wouldn't follow me up to my neighbors' party. But Fitzroy was nowhere in sight. So, I set off on foot, with my bottles of wine. On the way up to the lovely new home of Jackie and Marie, Fitzroy was there to greet me. He had already sensed that a party was underway, and he got up there early, without waiting to be invited along by me or anybody else.
Well, to cut a long story short, it was a wonderful evening, both for Fitzroy and for me. My dog was socially faultless. And he even had an opportunity (a must for every French dog) of tasting bones of frogs' legs. I drank glass after glass of rosé wine, and talked on with guests from Louisiana. The former owner, my friend Bob, was present, along with his companion Kiki. Towards the end of this marvelous evening, we all sat around a log fire, looking out over the Cournouze. Then I strolled back home with Fitzroy… who had behaved excellently, won many friends, and succeeded brilliantly in his social coming-out.
Asleep in the kitchen, Sophia was totally unimpressed, indeed uninterested, by our descriptions of this splendid evening of frogs' legs, rosé wine and a log fire. It's a fact: Sophia has never been a socialite.
Inside the house, whenever Sophia leaves her big wicker basket empty, Fitzroy has the habit of hopping into it, and often falling asleep. Fortunately, Sophia seems to find it perfectly normal that her basket should be borrowed, from time to time, in this way. As I've often said, she's imbued with a profound Christian spirit of charity. Outside, Fitzroy has always had a fine kennel, but he prefers to sleep out in the open, on a thick wad of straw in front of the wall of the house. This afternoon, for the first time ever, I was amused to discover that Sophia had borrowed Fitzroy's bed for a short nap.
It certainly looks like an attractive place to rest on a summer afternoon. The straw is surrounded by lavender, in full bloom. The shrub on the right is a white-flowering wisteria, whose foliage is sufficiently thick, at this time of the year, to act as a canopy capable of protecting the dog from rain. The plant on the left is a wild dog rose (Rosa canina, called églantier in French), which produces pale pink flowers.
I was wondering why the name of this wild rose (apparently the ancestor of cultivated roses) evokes dogs. In ancient times, people believed that the root of this plant could cure a person who had contracted rabies, after being bitten by an afflicted dog. I'm always amazed when I hear tales like that. I try to imagine the scenario: A gravely sick individual, on a stretcher, is carted along to an apothecary who—for reasons that are hard to fathom—gives the patient a concoction containing the ground-up roots of a wild rose bush. How and why did apothecaries decide that such a preparation might play a positive role in healing such a serious affliction as rabies? More to the point: Did the concoction actually produce positive results?
Maybe, an ancient apothecary happened to notice, like me, that his dogs liked to lie around outside on a bed of straw surrounded by lavender, in the shade of Wisteria and wild rose bushes. So, when one of his dogs went mad and bit people, the apothecary might have asked himself: "Before that animal went mad, what were the plants and flowers associated with its normal state of harmonious well-being?" And maybe the apothecary imagined that these same plants and flowers might play a role in restoring the health of victims of rabies.
This morning, I received an official letter from a fellow-citizen reminding me that my property at Gamone is located within one of the ecological zones defined in the context of a European chart, Natura 2000.
The following map indicates, in dark green, all the Natura 2000 zones (26 in all) in the Rhône-Alpes region, which includes many prestigious landscapes and extraordinary sites.
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Our tiny local zone, in the middle of the map, has an exotic official label: Prairies of wild orchids, tufa deposits and Gorges of the Bourne. Here is the exact location of the zone that includes Gamone:
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It's funny to learn that you're living in the middle of some kind of ecological museum. Normally, after next week's meeting in the municipal hall at Choranche, I'll know more about the down-to-earth implications of this affair. In any case, I'm such a profound admirer of my magnificent adoptive abode that I could hardly love and respect it any more than I do already. I even get around to thinking that the situation might be reversed. Maybe this wild and glorious land should have a little bit more respect for an awkward but intrepid old Antipodean such as me, living dangerously at times, who will never conquer its challenges, master its mysteries, nor fully behold its beauty.
One of my greatest pleasures consists of simply gazing out over the circus of Choranche from a first-floor window of my house at Gamone. Whenever I detect some special magic in the view, I take a photo. This one, for example, is a Bastille Day symphony of clouds rising over the eastern horizon:
This morning, down in front of the house, Fitzroy detected the presence of an alien visitor:
The blue balloon and its attached card had been sent into the air by a girl named Clémence, on the eve of Bastille Day, from an agricultural village up near Lyon. I mailed the card back to her, as requested, so that her village would have a record of this flight of one of its balloons. I imagined myself as Neil Armstrong on 20 July 1969, radioing back to Earth: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
Thankfully, here in France, we don't have to worry too much about the end of the world, programmed for 2012, because we can simply drive down to the magic mountain alongside the village of Bugarach, which will be saved from the Apocalypse.
[Click the photo for an English version of the fairy tale.]
I still feel it's a little too early to release the news officially, but I have strong reasons to believe that there has been an error in the geographical calculations of the people who started to talk about Bugarach. The true magic mountain that will be saved from Armageddon next year is in fact the nearby Cournouze, just opposite my home at Gamone.
Be that as it may, there's another emergency situation that must be handled urgently. I'm talking of zombie invasions.
I've just heard that the city of Bristol in England—home of my pious ancestor John Harris [1722-1801], who may have dabbled in the notorious slave-trading industry—has announced a plan to deal with zombie contingencies.
[Click the image for an English article on this theme.]
With all these nasty threats looming on the horizon, it's a bloody shame that News of the World will no longer be available to provide our dear English cousins with reliable in-depth information.
What people like Madeleine and Dédé are actually saying is that I should think twice before stepping out onto the slopes of Choranche equipped with a chainsaw. I remain nauseated by thoughts of what happened to me the day before yesterday, and traumatized above all by thoughts of what might have happened to me. So, I ask my readers to forgive me for not going into details. Let's summarize by saying that I made four huge blunders, simultaneously:
1. I went out onto the slopes to cut wood, without informing anybody of my intentions.
2. I failed to carry my iPhone with me.
3. I used my chainsaw to slice through a branch of a fallen tree, without realizing that the branch in question was keeping the huge trunk in equilibrium on the slopes.
4. When the huge trunk started to roll towards me, I was on the wrong (valley) side.
I prefer to refrain from describing the hour-long terror of being pinned beneath the trunk, and screaming for help. My Choranche neighbors Michèle Berger and Jackie Ageron were directly responsible for saving me. I enjoyed on-the-spot treatment from my wonderful doctor Xavier Limouzin, and a group of friendly firemen from Pont-en-Royans, followed by a ride to the hospital at Romans in the back of an emergency vehicle, followed by X-rays and medical examinations.
Today, I have almost recuperated all my physical faculties, and I'm thankful to be alive. No bones were broken. Just a few sore bruises. The dogs, too, seem to express their gratitude for my continued existence. Tineke and Serge have been like guardian angels.
I realize that there are certain "ordinary" activities at Gamone that must be banned totally, permanently. Thankfully, I love to work in front of the computer in my bedroom.
This morning, I started to burn some of the dead wood that has been lying around for ages down in the donkeys' paddock.
An hour later, I was surprised to find the donkeys standing out in the sun alongside the smoldering wood, with smoke often wafting over them. I think I know what's happening. The smoke from the dry walnut wood is not particularly acrid: neither for me nor, I suspect, for the donkeys. But it seems to keep flies and other insects away from the donkeys. The proof: they're not even wagging their tails, as they normally do, constantly, to brush away flies and insects. OK, it's surely not an ideal solution, but the donkeys appear to find it efficient, at least for a while.
I dedicate this blog post to the dear memory of my lovable Gavroche, who was immensely smart, anything but wild (he seemed to imagine himself as a male donkey), and whom I miss greatly.
It's probably your smell, Gavroche, that I miss most, because it defined you so beautifully. You were that smell. That smell was you. Who else on Earth would have accepted it, let alone wanted that terrible but wonderful smell? I trust that readers of Antipodes will not be tempted to misunderstand vulgarly my deep sentiments and words when I say that you taught me so much about sexuality, dear Gavroche, in that I soon concluded that it had been terribly cruel of me to bring you to Gamone without also inviting along a female companion of your species. But neighbors warned me that you were such a prolific little sex machine that Gamone would soon be peopled by a horde of your offspring… and I didn't have the courage to face such a demographic challenge (which may or may not have been realistic). So I condemned you to enduring a solitary frustrated existence… which never seemed to attenuate your natural behavior of masturbating grotesquely (sperm jets directed into your own face) and attempting vainly to screw sheep, donkeys and even Sophia. Retrospectively, I'm sure that I should have tried to organize for you a more decent sex life, but I still don't know how. Frankly, Gavroche, at times, your libido astounded and almost frightened me. You were the Primeval Prick.
Today, dear Gavroche, you are dust… but this doesn't stop me from admiring and loving you. I would even say that your dustiness makes me admire and love you more than ever… because I see you as an eternal cosmic goat. The stars above Gamone trace the cosmological form of a galaxy named Gavroche. And I worship you, dear goat.
Today, though, I wish to talk of other goats: your remote cousins. More precisely, specimens of Capra ibex. Here's a fabulous photo of a Slovenian female specimen:
And here's a male—bouquetin in French—in the Vercors:
I'm told that, in the vicinity of Gamone, there's a colony of a few dozen specimens of this ancient animal. Apparently, they live on the summits of the two mountains that I spoke of in a recent blog post: the Baret and the Trois Châteaux.
I took this photo from a spot on the famous chemin du Vert (green path) that runs along the crest above my house at Gamone. This is the ancient public path that the mayor of Choranche is talking about privatizing. In remembrance of Gavroche and his archaic Ibex cousins, I shall do everything that's imaginable (which probably won't amount to much, because everybody agrees with this thinking) to maintain this path as a part of our cultural heritage, since it would appear to be an ideal itinerary for spying upon our wild goats. I must admit that I haven't yet armed myself with a pair of powerful binoculars and set out to investigate this lovely idea, just above my head.
Meanwhile, Gavroche, dear goat of Gamone: Requiescat in pace.
One of the linden trees at Gamone blooms about a fortnight later than the others, no doubt because it's a different variety.
Flowers started to appear abundantly a few days ago.
Yesterday, I noticed that a swarm of bees had discovered the tree.
They probably come from hives that a local beekeeper installed, a year or so ago, on the other side of the hill in front of Gamone. As you might guess from reading my recent blog post entitled Basic beverages[display], I've always been so fond of fine tea and coffee that I rarely get around to brewing tisanes, which means that I don't call upon the huge potential supply of flowers from my linden trees. So, I'm happy that the bees take advantage of these flowers.
When it's raining at Gamone, I don't usually step outside to take photos. But yesterday, I decided to do so. So, I took this photo of the Cournouze with my Nikon in one hand and an umbrella in the other.
The dogs followed me in the rain, no doubt wondering what the hell I was up to.
If I were a little more courageous, I would take my video camera out in the bad weather, because there's a fascinating sequence that I would love to shoot. I'm talking of the movement of low clouds as they drift rapidly into the Choranche circus (round valley), no more than a hundred meters above the house. The first time I observed this phenomenon, at St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse in 1993, I was amazed. Up until then, I had always imagined that moving clouds are necessarily high in the sky. Here at Gamone, this phenomenon is quite commonplace.
For the first time ever, I've just purchased clothes on the Internet. It wasn't such a big deal: just a few quite ordinary T-shirts, some of them black, and the others white. And not particularly expensive.
It might be thought of as a small step for the blogger in front of his Macintosh, but it'll be a huge step for William parading through the village streets wearing sexy T-shirt gear purchased online through La Redoute. If ever I were to obtain any breathtaking visual scoops on this affair, I would of course let you know.
In my garden at Gamone, there are exactly 25 different rose bushes. This morning (probably for the first time ever), all the 25 were blooming… to a greater or lesser extent, of course.
In one square, there are three bushes that I transplanted from odd corners around the house. They certainly appear to be happier here than in their original locations.
The big white bush is thriving particularly well. It's a vigorous shrub variety, whose name I've forgotten, which sprouts out horizontally in the style of ground-cover roses. Here's a closer image:
Its flowers start out as tiny cream-colored buds in large clusters, then they turn white with golden centers, similar to the Lykkefund on the pergola, shown in a recent blog post [display]. Concerning the Lykkefund, I forgot to mention a curious detail: it has no thorns!
The first of the eight square plots in my garden is composed entirely of aromatic herbs. In the center, as in all of the eight plots, there's a lavender shrub, which won't be flowering before summer.
Funnily, when I wander through my garden, I find that the absence of vivid colors in this plot has a soothing effect.
In my blog post of 11 March 2011 entitled Fitzroy art collector[display], I drew attention to the fact that my dog appears to be a cultivated collector of interesting naturally-occurring wood objects. He's still engaged in this preoccupation, more than ever. Since Fitzroy has now evolved into a powerful animal, accustomed to twilight excursions into remote corners of Gamone Creek, the exceptional objects that he discovers and brings back to the house are becoming more and more sizable and significant.
I refer to them naively, in my inexpert language, as "works of natural art" because these objects appear to have been shaped and textured solely by Nature, with no creative interventions by man or beast. But Fitzroy might not be happy with this terminology, because I have reasons to believe that my dog considers that supernatural cosmic forces of a spiritual kind may have played a role in fashioning the objects that concern him. I would like to glean expert explanations on this vast subject from Fitzroy himself, but he's generally totally enthralled by the delicate handling and contemplation of his precious objects, and prefers not to talk too much about them. He tends to be somewhat elitist, and surely thinks of me as a Philistine. Let's call a spade a spade: Fitzroy's a nice guy, but he's a kind of art snob.
BREAKING NEWS (Thursday midday): My dog seems to be following me (as they say in Internet jargon). No sooner had I started to write this addendum than Fitzroy raced up the stairs, sat down on the floor alongside my desk, and reached up with his left paw and scratched my arm. What I wanted to say was that I had the impression, when I walked outside this morning, that Fitzroy had read the above blog post, and wished to confirm that my opinions were spot on. During the early hours of the morning, he went out on a search expedition and brought back an even bigger stick than the one in the above photo, and laid it down alongside the first one. Then the post woman Martine pulled up, in her little yellow van, and said to me spontaneously (as Fitzroy jumped up on the door of the vehicle to greet her): "I often notice half-burnt sticks in the middle of the road, left there by your little black dog." I really must start looking around for an academy of fine arts (maybe in nearby Provence) that would be prepared to accept my artistically-gifted dog as a student.
Nearly all the so-called "old roses" on my pergola are in full bloom today and, for some of them, this is the first time they've ever been in such a resplendent state.
Back in January, when the two horses were residing at Gamone, this was a view of the linden tree with the lower paddock in the background:
And here's the same scene this afternoon:
For those who have the good fortune to live in a rural environment, the seasons are present constantly in our existence, in a visceral fashion. An individual's body and mind is metamorphosed, no doubt, in a comparable manner, without our being totally aware of the current situation at any particular moment.
In my recent article about cutting down a dead tree at Gamone [display], I should have pointed out that the tree in question is known in French as a Frêne [Fraxinus excelsior]. In English, it's a European Ash. The latter term has nothing to do with the stuff that remains after a fire. It comes from a Saxon word, æsc, which means spear. Ash wood is indeed hard and dense, and I can well imagine it being used for spears.
Now, this is funny, because my surname, Skyvington, is derived from the Saxon expression Sceaftinga tûn, which can be translated as "the place of Sceaft’s people". Used as a noun, sceaft means a shaft or spear, suggesting that the original settlement (in what we now call Leicestershire) was the home of a Saxon warrior who was a reputed spear-thrower. So, the Saxon words sceaft and æsc are surely related.
This afternoon, I finished the job of cutting up the branches with a chainsaw. And it has provided me with a stock of fine dry firewood.
For the thicker parts of the trunk, I used steel wedges and a sledgehammer to split the wood.
Next winter, when I'm warming my toes in front of a log fire, I'll inevitably think back to the ancient Saxon warrior who was at the origin of my family name. He did this in a rather indirect manner, and grudgingly, because his settlement was simply taken over (maybe after a combat) by the companions of William the Conqueror. One of these Norman invaders was my real ancestor, not the celebrated Saxon spear-thrower. Be that as it may, I'm grateful to the Saxon fellow named Sceaft for participating unwittingly, unwillingly, in my personal genealogy by supplying me with my surname… just as I'll be grateful to the dead ash tree for supplying me with warmth.
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