Clearing

I had the chainsaw out yesterday and today. Took down four invasive false acacias and a scrappy field maple. Both these trees get everywhere.

Any fool can cut them down but cutting up and clearing the brash is hard going.

This bit of land is classed in Italian as ‘seminativo’. For a long while I laboured under the misapprehension that this meant semi-native. In fact it literally means seedable from seminare (as in seminar).

I often find myself thinking what a weird language - seedable! But then I thought of the English language equivalent ‘arable’. Good old solid straightforward English. But then I thought arable is very like Italian ‘aratro’ - a plough. The Latin root of arable is arablis. - literally ploughable - which is really not so far from seedable