Pond life

At the beginning of the month, before we went away, I dismantled the micro-ponds in the middle of the back garden, as noticed for the second time at reference 1.

Over the last couple of days, I have been using stuff from the bottom of the brick compost heap, not emptied now for several years, to back fill the holes. It will all sink down over the winter to come and will need more, but it is a start.

Apart from a thin layer, just below the surface, it was all very dry, despite all the water that goes in along with the kitchen waste - less animal waste which attracts vermin and is disposed of separately - despite its being very good for compost.

There were a lot of peanut shells, which perhaps need a lot more water to help their decay along. There were lots of bits of plastic film, the remnants of the covers of books that have been buried over the years: these were removed for disposal elsewhere. And there were lots of mainly fibrous roots from the trees and bushes round about. I dare say it was these roots that sucked all the water out of the compost.

Various patches of colour, presumably what was left of something both substantial and distinctive. Perhaps, rather in the way of the odd patches of colour noticed the other day in the red cliffs of Yaverland.

In the way of tools, it was the mattock which did best, even though I am no longer fit to swing a mattock for more than a few swings at a time. Vicious thing though, cutting through all kinds of stuff which would be troublesome with a spade.

Over the two days, something more than half a dozen barrow loads of compost, roots and all. The two larger holes are full to the brim - until it rains and starts to wash the stuff down.

The front of the bin was badly rotted, but I got it back in one piece and it has got a few more years before I need to do anything. Particularly if I do not disturb it again.

The way I had worked was to push the top layer of un-rotted, recent compost from front to back, so clearing the way to the stuff that I wanted. When I finished today and pulled it back, the still damp surface underneath was alive with small wood lice and other small arthropods. Which surprised me, as I had seen more or less nothing in the lower depths. They must confine themselves to the thin layer which suits, a few inches below the surface.

Moving on, later in the day, I was turning the pages of chapter 4 of Thomas of reference 7, and came across the briars from which you make pipes. It seems that the bit in question is the bur, a swollen, woody collar between the roots and the stems of a sort of heather, Erica arborea. Something which he says usually happens to woody plants which are coppiced or which are on land which is subject to fire.

I failed to find this usage of  'bur' in OED, not even when I widened the search to burr, birr and bir. Although there was something about the swollen base of a deer's horn. A word which merits further attention.

I thought in a vague way that I had learned of briar pipes being nothing to do with briars before, and so it turned out to be. Reference 2 from just about a decade ago. So briar is from the French bruyère. Littré on the subject, rather out of focus, is included above.

I then turned to the matter of emptying the compost bin. The early record is a bit patchy, although there is talk of this once being an annual exercise. More recently it seems to have been triennial. See references 3 thru 6.

PS 1: just as well I checked with Gemini. It now seems likely that the proof reader assigned to Thomas missed the slip of 'bur' for 'burl'. A word which I shall look up tomorrow. He also talks of the 'white heath tree (Erica arborea), a tough, flowering evergreen shrub native to the Mediterranean basin'. This despite Littré talking of Breton. Something else to check.

PS 2: I have now had a second go at this. Neither OED nor Webster's were very helpful with 'burls', only attracting rather short entries and more to do with dealing with lumps in woven textiles than lumps on trees. However, using burl as part of a search term for Bing or for Google opened the right doors, turning up lots of stuff. Some of this is listed under 'second shift' below.

The first bottom line is that root burls are cut out of white heath trees and, with a good deal of care and attention, turned into pipes. A white heather tree with trunk burls is snapped above. See also reference 12.

White heather is also widely available as an ornamental from garden centres.

Burls are roughly hemispherical growths on either the trunks or roots of trees, often kicked off by stress of one sort or another: for example, coppicing, fire and parasite. There are often lots of adventitious buds on the outer surface, in part responsible for the attractive appearance of wood taken from burls. Reference 9 for burls, reference 10 for the appearance of the wood therefrom.

Lignotubers are structurally similar growths which enclose the base of the trunk, doughnut fashion, but are supposed to be there, rather than the result of stress. They can attain metres in diameter, but they are not what we have in the present case. Reference 11.

Pipe manufacturers were keen to tell me all about their wares and their manufacture, and it looks as if some of their pipes can be very expensive. All kicked off by the French discovering the root burrs of the white heath tree produced wood which was attractive, hard and fire resistant - and so better for making pipes than anything that had been tried before. See references 12 thru 17. While reference 18 is from the DIY end of the business; a craft which looks to be popular in the US. Reminding me that this type of craft for men seems to be commoner in the US than here in the UK. Or is it just that being bigger they are more visible?

It is sometimes possible to harvest these root burls without killing the tree - which is presumably worth the considerable bother, given that the tree is very slow growing by agricultural standards.

The second bottom line is that in sorting out the brief reference to pipes in reference 7, dictionaries were not that helpful. Gemini then unlocked the puzzle by turning up the word 'burl', and after that it was easy enough to get the rest using conventional search.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/end-of-era-second-day.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/briar.html.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/02/xh25-radials.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/03/breakfast-for-worker.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/compost-bin-first-day.html. The occasion on which the present front panel was made.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/excavation-two.html. Compost piled up behind the bed which is now full of Carex pendula. Which seems to be doing alright in this hot weather. But then it is in the shade  and it is wet enough in the winter.

Reference 7: Trees: Their natural history - Peter A. Thomas - 2014.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolley-859.html. Another sort of briar. You also get then in the 'Uncle Remus' stories.

Second shift

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl..

Reference 10: https://canadianwoodworking.com/techniques_and_tips/beauty-of-burls/.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignotuber.

Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_arborea.

Reference 13: https://blakemar.co.uk/about/making-pipes/.

Reference 14: https://www.cookwoods.com/collections/briar-burl. A timber merchant rather than a pipe manufacturer.

Reference 15: https://www.pipe.fr/en/blog/the-manufacturing-steps-of-a-briar-pipe-n73.

Reference 16: https://www.cgarsltd.co.uk/what-briar-wood-a-519.html.

Reference 17: https://www.gilmerwood.com/articles/briar_burl. Another timber company, with a good summary of what is involved out on the heath, as opposed to in the factory.

Reference 18: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Making. The DIY version.

Reference 19: Lignotuber reserves support regrowth following clipping of two Mediterranean shrubs - J. Canadell, L. López-Soria - 2002. Some useful introductory material at the beginning.