Fig grafting & camper van wedding

We have just returned from the wedding of Sabrina's brother in Nimes which was quite an adventure because rather than paying for a hotel we rented a camper van and tested out how it felt living in there as a family. But before I tell you about that I want to continue on from my last post by telling you about fig grafting.

We have this fig tree in our courtyard which produces a dark black/purple variety and we would like to attach a different lighter variety to the top of the tree.

Here is the scion wood (mother plant) which I cut from a neighbour's enormous tree. It is a green variety of fig with an amazing vanilla flavour.

Here is the piece I removed from our tree. I made sure the replacement piece was around the same diameter as the one it is being attached to.

Using my fancy new grafting knife I then cut what is known as a wedge graft.

The cambium of the sticks (inner white bit) must line up for a successful graft.

Not gonna lie, this is my first attempt at fig grafting so I cannot say with certainty it will work yet, but something tells me it will be alright.

Next we seal off the connection with a tight wrap of cling film.

Under this section one must then make a cut on either side of the wood.

This is because the sap in a fig tree flows with force and without these little cuts there is a possibility that it will actually push the graft off over time.

Finally I created a mini greenhouse of sorts by loosely wrapping cling film around the entire newly grafted scion wood.

I left enough at the top to pull it over like this.

And tie it off in order to keep the rain out.

In fact what we have in this pot is two fig trees, both of which now have grafts attached. And in case you are wondering, the little plants growing at the base of the trees are rocket.

Will update you later in the season. On this and the plum tree in our garden which now has almond, peach & apricot growing on it. The scion wood cuttings seen below.

Look carefully and you will see a total of ten bud grafts on this tree now, turning a simple plum tree into so much more.

Exciting times by my standards!

Weddings glorious weddings

Back in my London days I filmed & edited weddings every weekend because it was a lucrative business for me.

But the effect of all those weddings was ultimately an attitude of indifference towards them. It became clear these occasions had very little to do with the union of two people in a life-long bond and much more to do with blindly following tradition, the ego or money related issues.

On this occasion I was not the cameraman and even better, we were going in a camper van!

Here you can see Sabrina & her mother getting their make-up 'professionally' done on the morning of the wedding.

Esteban & Luna looked cool in their outfits ;)

Here's Sabrina & I, getting into the music.

Bride & groom here.

Esteban & friends were the centre of attention with their dancing.

But unlike the other children Esteban was still there with the 'survivors' getting very crazy towards the end of the night. It was weird how comfortable he was surrounded by extremely drunk people!

There was a beautiful organic moment right at the end in which the DJ started playing 'Time of my life' from Dirty Dancing and some of the guys formed a line on the floor, permitting other people to run and dive on to them, being carried along to the end.

Here is Sabrina's brother doing exactly that.

And here's Esteban doing it!

Am pretty sure I would not have had the confidence to do this when I was six years old.

Was grateful to see the lady at the end of the row who gently aided him down.

Needless to say Esteban was ecstatic for having done it.

Yeah, I wasn't the cameraman but I still filmed everything on my GoPro ;)

While I may not agree with occasions like this, I do still believe that if a person is going to spend a ton of money on one night of fun, they might as well throw in a bit extra to have someone film it.

I will send them the video free of charge in due course and they will be grateful to have something rather more permanent than the night itself.

The experience of being in a camper van was a bit testing if I'm going to be honest. With Sabrina's parents there were six of us in there, which is probably too many for such a small space. Plus, I left a window open before setting off on the way back and it blew off with a windy gust on the motorway! So we lost our deposit and I had to learn the hard way that camper van windows are not like car windows.

We are still intending to buy a motorhome of our own but nothing which ticks all our boxes has come up yet. If these petrol prices keep going up, something tells me we will be seeing a bunch more vehicles on the market as people realise they are no longer affordable to run.

Time will tell...

Love & Light everyone 🌱