The little boy of the family (sevenish), visiting a house surrounded by trees, was fascinated by the piles of logs. When the time came for father, mother and children to depart homewards, he carried a couple of logs of manageable size for him, and carefully packed them in the car along with the spare wellies and mountains of winter clothing. His father, an academic, explained: "I find that sawing wood is great for working off tensions. It calms me down." The law, it appears, often collects the raw material for him.
Similar forms of relaxation have their historical precedents. Gladstone enjoyed it. The deposed Kaiser in his exile in Doorn, too. And was it Lloyd George who shared this pastime with him? Sawing or chopping, anyway getting exercise and inhaling the fresh smell of cut wood into their nostrils and lungs, lifts the spirit. Bismarck found solace in oaks, in particular. He would stand with his back to the trunk for maybe half an hour, and it is said, felt the life that pulsed through the tree invigorating his own body.
Anyway, trees in winter, even visually, have ways of calming the human spirit. Stripped of leaves, you see in the deciduous varieties, the bare shape which, in summer, is clothed. Not that all the leaves have gone in the week before Christmas. Many of the smaller beech will hold their nutbrown leaves well into the spring, likewise the hornbeam, which means that both make good hedges. The many birches give you a range of colours from whitewash white, through black and white to orange and brown, and, in their winter self-pruning litter the ground below with black lacy twigs which can trip you as easily as a loose bootlace. The ash look clean and slim, and likewise in this end of the year shed small branches and twigs like confetti.
Oaks, all grown from the same mother tree, have their own individuality in shape. You have planted them too close, but you would need half an acre (well, a quarter) to give each individual all the space it needs. But the felled ones make good firing. Poplars of the Lombardy persuasion assume stately proportions early on, and also give good wood for the fire. But the most enduring wood for long burning is the hawthorn from a well-grown tree. A log, of say, eight inches in length and perhaps six inches in diameter, put onto the dying embers late at night before going to bed, can instantly be blown into a lively flame eight hours later. It needs only a year to dry out after felling.