Herbst (autumn) has arrived in the north of Germany. After a few sunny weeks at the beginning of September we are today enjoying Platzregen (just like it sounds!) which should do your trees well.

What a nice rainy summer! Thanks to a mobile yellow watering tank strapped on to our AvantTecno (check this Finnish gizmo out!) we were able to reach the furthest walnut tree (Juglans regia ‘Buccaneer’) without dragging around hundreds of meters of hose. Nearly everything survived and even thrived.

Despite the rain, two oaks fell sick — Quercus petraea and Quercus frainetto. One of them turned yellow in August, the other went completely brown shortly thereafter and lost all its leaves. There is still sap in the branches and we’re hoping for a recovery next spring. We think it may be related to a beetle that has damaged a nearby colossus, a tragedy, since this tree is probably several hundred years old and sits at the beginning of Schlichter Weg, the old country byway home to fields, hedgerows, and a beech and larch forest.

After the drought of the last few years the trees all throughout our area continue to suffer. Though it rained this summer the damage of the last few years is evident. Many trees at the edge of forests have died, most tragically large oaks like this one, and many majestic beeches, maples and ash trees.

Finally, we had a truly incredible experience in June when we discovered a deer that had been felled by a wolf at the edge of our property. Our local hunting official estimated that it was a Rothirsch around 4 years old. We found it lying under a wild plum tree. A gorgeous animal who had either been hunted by wolves on the property — a pack lives in the nearby forest — or injured in the forest and able to make it to us before it died.

The experience of witnessing the cycle of life and an apex predator just meters away from us was very profound. The renewed presence of wolves in Germany after a century of being hunted to near extinction is a much discussed political issue in our area and we have a lot to learn. But we were awestruck by their presence so close to us. It was the feeling that something in nature must also be going right.