cypresses in a blue october

I"M GENERALLY NOT A FAN OF CUPRESSA, Leylandii etc: wrecked many a garden and view poisoning the soil and driving other plants out by sucking up all the rainfall. With the possible exception of the Cypress tree, as it manifests itself in and around the Vaucluse, Drôme etc. Here they grow exceeding tall if left to their own devices and can be extemely slim, perhaps no wider than two metres on a full height tree, much less on junior growths as you'd expect. They punctuate the landscape. I think they are mostly if not entirely planted but in some places you would hardly know it. In others… well it is extremely obvious. Birds seem to like them to roost in and the trees certainly show you which way the wind is blowing…

This autumn of twenty-twenty-one we observed for the first time we could recall, several cypress clipping and pruning events. A pricey task I shouldn't wonder. Our neighbour across the road in Rue Fortuné Bernard demonstrated the only way to do it when your trees are higher than your house: get a man in. With serious kit. 

I don't approve of the habit of some clients to require a rounded off top on their cypresses… I prefer the more naturalistic appearance, when the tree is left to grow on up at its tapering top.  But just look what elegance they add to this hill top village (Suzette). 

Some communes use the cypress as a quick growing plane tree substitute along roads they want to give a bit of gravitas to. Alright if the mistral doesn't get right into them when they can become most untidy looking. They seem to recover…pull themselves together as it were,  or get clipped. Could be either. Could be both. 

One can of course go a bit overboard with cypress trees…… they can be rather intimidating.

Imposing may be but a bit pompous don't you think? I don't think these have been clipped. Making a rod for your own back if you start clipping them, I'd imagine. That's the trouble with cupressa. Specially if you run to cypress counts like these drives above. And as for the rounded top thing: well they hardly look like trees at all when that's done to them. These (left) are at Durban: a wine domaine of distinction (and crus) that faces the St Hilaire ridge above Beaumes-de-Venise. 

You haven't the faintest idea where I'm talking about, have you? Never mind. Just envy those blue skies and try and get to being 'cypress aware' should you come this way sometime. 

Some are slimmer than others. 

Some are taller than others. 

A bit like the folk who like them…