It is the first day of meteorological winter. This system simply splits the year into four seasons, each with three calendar months, and so winter runs from 1 December until 28 February, with 1 March being the first day of spring. It sort of works, depending on the year. The leaves are gone from the deciduous trees and we have had several frosts in the lead up. Though temperatures are very up and down, currently a little warmer than average.
The 1st of December is symbolic in that apart from being the first day of winter, it is first day of Advent. Volunteers in the local streets will be each putting a date number in their window, going from 1 to 24, culminating in the community garden on Christmas Eve for hot drinks and gifts for children. There is a map, available in the community garden, showing where the day numbers will be, but not which will be where. You will need to take a walk round Earlham Grove and Clova Road to find them all. It is a good fun walk when they are in place. Some will be simple designs, some more colourful and ornate, judging on last year’s event.
The other system for breaking up the year into seasons is the meteorological one. It uses the four solstices. Under this system, winter begins at the Winter Solstice which is 21 December, the shortest day of the year. In the London the day will be 7 hours, 49 minutes, and 42 seconds long. The sun will set at 3:56 PM. Remarkably, today has the earliest sunset of the year at 3.55 pm. I find this surprising as you would think that the earliest sunset would be on the shortest day.
Looking up the reason why, I found it is due to the fact that the earth does not move in a circle round the sun but has an elliptical orbit. This causes variations between solar time and clock time, most obvious at this time of year. And is why you should never catch a train using a sundial, as the train timetable goes by the clock and not by the sun.
The changing of day length throughout the year is because the earth’s axis is at an angle of 23.4 degrees to the sun. The winter solstice occurs when this tilt is away from the sun, and at its maximum. The sun is then at its lowest in the sky. This tilt away is what gives us the shortest day and the longest night of the year. In the southern hemisphere the opposite is true.
There has been some confusion between coppicing and pollarding of trees, and their actual meanings amongst volunteers. So let’s clear it up. A large tree is coppiced when it is cut to the ground. This does not kill the tree but results in shoots growing in a sort of ring formation from the roots. It is an ancient woodland technique in use since the stone age. The shoots could be grown on for a few years and then used for firewood, poles, fence palings, general timber or for making charcoal.
Pollarding is when the tree is cut back about 6 feet high, and so the shoots grow at that height. The reason for this is deer; they will eat the coppiced shoots, which grow at ground level and are tender when new, but they cannot reach pollarded shoots.
The National Trust says, ‘These days, coppicing is primarily a way of improving the health and biodiversity of a woodland area by opening it up to the sunlight and allowing a wider range of plants to flourish. But the coppiced wood doesn’t go to waste at the places in our care – some is still dried as firewood and we sometimes use it to make fences, benches, stiles and stakes for hedge laying.’
Our two sycamores are going to be trimmed. Definitely not coppiced or pollarded.