Saturday 4 April 2009

Hard graft?

Pomona's year always begins with thoughts of how to increase the sum and substance of her orchards. Unlike mortals, Pomona cannot simply nip down to the garden centre but has to conjure new trees from a couple of twigs. The twigs usually arrive courtesy of Brogdale in early February, and grafted at leisure in mid-March.

Pomona drew upon Ancient Wisdom to learn her craft. Unfortunately Ancient Wisdom did not know about the more useful Modern Wisdom of duck tape and clothes-pegs, so the first trees grew from unions barely held together with rafia and sealed with molten wax. How many hours and candles were wasted in this method is not recorded, but the grafts were successful, and a large Beurré Precoce de Morettini and Dutch Medlar flourish to this day.

No comments: