Despite this we'll be having a bonfire this November. It probably won't be on the 5th and I doubt we'll be organised enough to invite friends round to tramp up the muddy hill to see it. Instead it'll probably end up being me on my own making sure the fire stays under control and safely burns all that we pile on it. The reason why? To control the effect of leaf miner moths on our 100 year old Horse Chestnut tree.
Last autumn the huge tree that towers over our garden suffered from the signs of the dreaded moths, with leaves turning brown, shrivelling and falling from th
e branches long before November. There seems to be little that can be done to combat these destructive moths but I read somewhere that if you do nothing else, burn the leaves instead of composting them. So we did, although there's no way we could collect all the leaves from some a huge tree.
Looking at the tree this Autumn it looks in far better condition with the leaves just turning brown, unlike Horse Chestnuts that we pass on the way to work that have been bearing brown shrivelled leaves for weeks. I can only deduce that this is thanks to us destroying moths that would otherwise have overwintered in the dead leaves and would've been ready to attack the tree this spring.
So our bonfire will nodoubt be smokier than some, with it's abundance of leaves, but it'll be in a good cause to try and protect the iconic horse chestnut that has towered over Hillside almost since the day the cottage was first built.
Roe Deer enjoying the fruits of the horse chestnut tree
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