The glossy livid leaves and bunched flowers of ivy hung down in cloud masses from high in the old apple trees. Better to cut through at the stem and let their high branches slowly die. Then break off the thicker stems from the apple tree branches another year, when the dead ivy had died and dropped its leaves.
But the artist Piet Mondrian hated the colour green.
That or hard prune the apple trees themselves. Cut them at mid- branching height. Careful not to take out all the growing ends at once. Leave more than half the main stems and branches for another year’s work. Only cut to two points above last year’s growing point.
Green was refused from the artist’s palate.
It was winter. The apple trees were bare of leaves. Abandoned fruit lay scattered and blackened with rot beneath the trees. There was no grass around the trees. The ground, long shaded by the overgrowing ivy, was bare but for nettles and thorn. Knocked flat by rain, occasional nights of frost and the many footprints of boots, the rain saturated mud had spread out to fill much of the spaces in between the trees.
The artist laid his dry brushes in two neat rows on the studio table.
Two apple trees had been so long shaded they might not recover. There were five other apple trees in the orchard that might come to bear fruit another year. But not this year, it would take a long time for new shoots to grow and thicken. Then prune again. After that the contingent promise that a blossom will set. Depending. The weather for blossom in spring, and the bees.
One larger apple tree could be his single subject. Often there was no background.
One had grown taller than the others. Drawn tall. It was over shaded by the uncut yew hedge close to it, and the young elms which had self-sprouted high in the rough ground beyond.
The retina of his eye receives, as if the optometrist image, dark red with his own blood also belonged to him.
The major cuts had been made to the thick stems branches. There is form but there is no shape. Return in a year to see if any shoots have sprouted from below.
Square geometries also received the wisdom of his eyes in place of seen forms.
The thick-stemmed ivy in the largest apple tree had been sawn through at its stem the year before. The dark rotted stems were broken and prized off the tree. Moss and lichen cascaded down with them.
He was blind in old age.
Bare of ivy, the days of heavy rain had begun to wash the black earth silt from off the apple tree bark. The fresh pruned branches were piled along the upper side of the orchard side in heaps. They refused to burn. Even the long dead wood was too wet.
His colours were delicate light and dark shades of grey.
Lichen enlivened both the main stems and all the higher branches.