Bricolage Gardening

Hazel 

Coll

Full moon 31st August 2023

Barefoot wandering – hedgerow haircuts – wild honey – perspective – precious pockets – restepping – backdoor savannah

Filled with delight, the deep brown hazelnuts hung in front of me, laden with fruit, branches drooped down with the weight of its bounty. I couldn’t believe my luck, they were perfectly seasoned, just what I had been hoping to find… This was one of the relics I awoke with this morning,  dreamt beneath an almost-full moon that had shone through my window as I drifted off to sleep. Rather than feel short-changed for the lack of ripe cobnuts in my pockets, I felt rather pleased. Dreams are typically the stage where all manners of anxieties and fears in my life play out, often entertaining, but rarely care-free. The hazelnut dream, or perhaps prophecy (fingers crossed), was thus a welcomed guest in my sleeping world.

Back in July, I attended the Land Skills Fair, an event celebrating the wonders of all things agro-ecological, bringing people together to share skills, food and music. During a rainy afternoon, I attended a workshop by Isla Mcleod on the topic of land-based rituals. It was here that I was first introduced to the Celtic tree calendar, which is supposed to have been a tradition of the Celts in which a sacred tree was attributed to each of the 13 moons. Isla spoke of a ritual she had done, giving special attention to the tree attributed to that particular moon cycle as a way of connecting with the moon rhythms and the seasons change. Having recently moved back to my childhood home in Stanton Drew and with an eagerness to become better acquainted with my surroundings, I decided to embark on a similar adventure of connecting with the trees considered sacred by our ancestors.

‘Keep your eyes to the skies, never glued to your shoes’ is a Mac Miller lyric that often arises in my mind when foraging, drawing an inward smirk, it doesn’t quite hold its wisdom when looking for food in the wild. This has rung true in my quest for hazelnuts and it is usually the sight of empty shells around my feet that draws me back into the present and awakens me to the fact that I am standing below some hazel. Having become rather fixated on the task of getting a harvest of nuts, I have been out rambling more in the last month than the last few years combined. Blessed with some late summer sunshine and a break from work, I have been free to roam the network of footpaths  weaving the farmland that surrounds. With a mission to find trees yet to be stripped by grey squirrels, I have ventured beyond the usual loops around my house, instead following routes that only tickle the faintest of memories and some which seem new altogether, leading me to form my own fresh network of neural pathways. 

In every case I am last to the party, squirrels leave behind the scatterings of shells, reminding me that I am far down the pecking order out here. Like a true novice and I’m sure to their amusement, I still get down onto my hands and knees picking at the remains of their work, a vulture behind a pack of lions, but with less calories to show for the effort. All too aware that the nuts remaining have probably been left for a reason, but with a curiosity to not accept defeat, I have continued to try my luck. In searching for cobnuts, it has been an interesting point of reflection for me on lost wisdom. I’m yet to find out an exact proportion, but I would be surprised if any more that 20% of the nuts I have collected are going to contain anything. In the past, this processing knowledge would have been engrained from a young age, being able to hold a cobnut and know if it was empty or rotten from its weight and colour. With neither experience or guidance from elders, I have picked everything from green to brown and small to large, hoping that once I have cracked into each of them, I might have a better understanding come next year of what to leave and what to harvest. I will be becoming more squirrel!Or perhaps more human.

Now in Mid-September, at the end of the hazelnut season and on the day of the new Moon, I took to the footpaths for one last foray. In search of mature trees, I headed South towards Folly Farm, one of the few wooded areas near my home. A mile or so in, I reach a small patch of woods, not big enough to appear on an OS map, but a healthy stand of hazel and Ash  that reached up from steep slopes of what appeared to be slag. I walk along its edge for a short while and stand below a canopy of ivy that is purring with life, bees and wasps smothering the sun stroked deep greens of ivy, soaking up the heat and nectar that resides there. I trod on along some kind of old bridleway that climbs up a steep hill towards Clutton. Its use is clearly meagre, the edges encroach with great vigour, nettles, rose and hawthorn reaching out to close the path completely. I expect that green-laners and the occasional farmer are all that keeps it alive. Gaining some elevation, I can see back towards Stanton Drew and out towards the neighbouring village of Chew Magna that by and large remains hidden by trees. Above my head is Coll and below my feet are empty shells, but I manage to scram a few nuts that the squirrels have missed or deemed unfit. At the brow of the hill I hop over a barbed-wire fence into a pocket of mature trees that intrigue me. There are several maples with sturdy trunks, I drop my  rucksack and shoes to climb one which has a carpeting of moss. Ten feet off the ground I get a rush of vertigo in my stomach and a reminder of my dream this morning where I fearfully had to cross a swinging metal footbridge in the mountains. Once settled, I turned to my right and noticed a mass of honey bees, whizzing in and out of an ash tree, where they appear to have made their home. Taking out some binoculars to have  a closer look, I notice a golden brown substance coating areas of the bark surrounding their entrance. One of such patches is covered by a cluster of bees, huddled together in the afternoon sun. I watch in excitement for several minutes, imagining the possibility of pulling back the bark and gorging on wild honey. I lose hope quickly, as I put down the binoculars and see that the hive stands fifteen feet from the ground. Careful not to unravel by day what was woven by night, I place my feet carefully when descending the tree. 

Back on the move I followed the contour to Round Hill, One of the landmarks in Chew Valley that offers impressive views over the lake and surroundings, as well as boasting a ‘does what is says on the tin’ name. Itching with curiosity, as I write, I’ve taken a rabbit hole detour to trace the etymology of another view point in the area Knowle Hill, which has been bugging me of recent as I was sure knowle meant hill, meaning this viewpoint would have been called Hill hill… The etymology traces back to the word cnoll/cnolle/knoll with meanings such as hilltop, small hill, clod, ball, crest of a hill, lump, tubar. Now this has got me very excited, as although I cannot find a connection online, the similarities between the celtic word for Hazel (Coll) and the etymology of Knowle, as well as the meanings given to the word, surely these descriptions are also fit for the cobnut. The synchronicity of this ritual is truly bearing fruit. 

Rejoining the intended narrative, I cut back into Folly Wood, losing panoramas, but gaining the peace and quiet of the chlorophyll cathedrals around me. Pealing back out into sun drenched pasture, the footpath leads me across a savannah-like scene, pockets of shrubs and brambles scatter the grassland like patchwork, wildflower purples hue the ground with delicacy. I find it hard to remember I’m merely a few miles from where I grew up, the habitats that surround me seem unfamiliar, ecology that conventional agriculture doesn’t allow for. Eventually I begin to descend back down into ‘the lowlands’, following a grove of trees down towards the settlement of Stowey. As the footpath turns to track, I’m blessed with yet another gift. Around my feet lie a flurry of hazelnuts, seemingly untouched, with very little evidence of squirrel activity. I look up and see branches still laden with fruit, quite a different picture from all other trees that have dropped their cobnuts or had then stripped. Jumping to grab a low hanging branch, I am able, for the first time, to harvest straight from the tree, not quite the golden brown that I had envisioned, but nonetheless, a dream come true.