Lilac Wood

Discussing gardens with Mum, mentioning how I would like a lilac tree.

'Lilac trees are unlucky,' she said. 'Find another tree.'

'Bro's garden has a lilac tree in the front garden, the old kind that only flowers every two years,' I replied. ' The fragrance is divine. It's brought no bad luck.'

Then my memory cut in, and I let mum talk for a bit. 'Lilacs are beautiful, but why tempt fate?'

Modern interpreters say that lilac's reputation for bad luck stems from its attractiveness to fairies. I wonder if I read this long ago and then forgot it, only for the most indistinct memories to arise when I saw the house and the tree. Maybe that's why I always considered the place unseelie.

Tenuously this led me to think of a friend's big adventure: he's taking on a croft, a specifically Scottish form of small scale farming which seems at once a wonderful and very difficult thing to do. The money baffles me slightly; I quote my friend in case I ever need to find this again.

"The assignation of the croft is a protected item. We paid 70k for it [20 acres, Isle of Skye] and need to fulfil certain requirements to hold onto it ie use it usefully as a croft. While we do so we have a rent to pay that is £144 a year. We can't convert it to a owner occupied croft sadly [i.e they can't buy it outright from their landlord] but we're okay with that. We can build on it, and in fact have a legal right to build a family home on the croft. Where we have a home built, or want to build a home but need it to not be part of the assignation we can do what is called a decrofting for that piece if land (up to 0.5 acres). Decrofting cuts that space free and allows for mortgages too. Crofting law is *complicated *"

Sounds it. But 20 acres! What could I do with 20 acres? Not farm it obviously, I would be a rubbish farmer, surrounded by geriatric chickens and beasts I couldn't bear to kill. In many ways I find hunting for food a more sustainable idea than farming, but perhaps that very much depends on the farmer or the hunter.

But if I am going to dream of a fantasy croft, might as well dream big. Trees, many trees, and in the centre of it all a lilac grove full and redolent, ambrosial with bluebells for when the lilacs slumber. Stick some primrose and hawthorn and violets nearby, all around it great trees, blossom and bloom, and flowers of the woodlands... and then bees! Loadsa bees! Hah! I could make a fairy folklore wood!

But many of these crofts are scraped bare to the wind; Long ago on some of the isles settlers chopped down trees leaving the topsoil exposed to erode away; other places became and remain sheep grazing country. My dim purple dreams are just that, I who am so pleased and proud when my first poppy makes her appearance! First of June, she kept none of us waiting. Isn't she splendid?