There’s maybe nothing as naked as a winter larch. Like a sphinx cat, at first it looks wrong, as if there is something missing – newly bald, needle-less.
The journey here, though, is remarkable. The baby-soft new green in spring. The metamorphosis in autumn. Oranges, yellows, branches like fluffy tiger tails.
I planted two tiny saplings in Denmark 14 years ago. They are giants now. We are here for a quick week to see my mother-in-law, in remission from being poorly. The pain has for now near-miraculously gone.
There is lots to do on the plot. Remarkably, there hasn’t yet been a frost. And this from a place where the northern sea sometimes freezes. Locals have been known to drive over the ice.
The nasturtiums have spread out like extravagant octopuses. Multi-limbed, luxuriant, jewelled with dew. Most of the trees have long turned; the last hanging leaves coloured old gold and rust.
The twin oaks have dumped countless barrowloads. Smothering, leathery. My hands blister with gathering some of it up. The grass too long, dotted with herb robert and other flowers.
Henri’s hands are blistered, too: from planting narcissi bulbs. It’s dry, so we fix the mower at its highest setting. Henri trims. It works. We spread some of the broken leaf on the borders.
As always there is too much to do in the time we have away from remote working. We pick the last apples from the old-style Danish tree: Ingrid Marie from Funen. Henri makes her pie. We store the rest of the fruit in the garden shed, hoping the mice have left.
We have a polecat that moves into the roof most winters. I reluctantly block its most obvious path and scatter broken-up fat balls to placate the pheasant who shrieks indignantly under the hanging feeders.
We still need to thin out random cherry trees, bird-sown. But that will wait until we are back, at Christmas.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
