Morning all. I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. Mine was nice and quiet which is always a bit of a relief. I like to recharge over the weekends. It makes Monday flow so much more smoothly. But thinking of flowing, we need to get on with it. So let’s flow into our morning writing prompt. Timers at the ready and off we go.
Okay I like this one. I suspect a truffle invasion and thievery is soon to come, but I like it. I’d have to do a bit of research first though. Somehow this isn’t where I expected this to go when the timer started counting down the fifteen minutes.
Monday, June 19th: The bark was stripped from the tree.
The bark was stripped from the tree. Bare spots, flecked with mud started at about knee height and went all the way down to the ground. ‘Deer,’ he thought. ‘Maybe boar.’
Either were a possibility in this part of the estate. He would have to check the wildlife cameras they installed in the surrounding areas to catch images of their perpetrators. For now, there were the trees to salvage.
Normally with the wildlife of the Evermore Estate he had a live and let live policy. The walled garden was generally safe from their predations and what made it in was seen to by the gardener. This however was different. These trees needed to be protected.
They were hazelnut trees and while he did enjoy the nuts each year and the estate did make a sizable income off of the nuts/ The real treasure was beneath the ground. These trees were inoculated with the truffle fungus. He knew there was some sort of long Latin name for them but he just thought of them as truffle trees and left it at that. It was a long shot that any of the indoctrinated trees would take and grow truffles and it was an expensive longshot to boot.
It was also one he had told no one about. The money was his, as was the estate so no one questioned his expenditures. He kept his own books for the estate so he doubted anyone realized he paid more than he would for ordinary hazelnut trees. He carefully installed them and he made enough off of the annual nut harvest to justify the investment. In fact in the five years since he planted the trees they had grown and flourished and nearly paid for themselves.
It was one of the many avenues of expanded income from the estate. They needed to shift their focus if they were going to remain a viable entity into the future. At the moment they were. Their agricultural concerns made the estate profitable, but mother nature was always a fickle beast. He was proud he at least stopped the drain. In his father and grandfather’s time the business ventures outside of the estate paid for the estate. Now the estate paid for itself and he was able to bank the profits form the other business ventures for a rainy day. While they didn’t need to open their gardens to the public and have people tromping through the house gawking at the fixtures, they did open certain gardens to the public once a month throughout the year and then once a week in summer. Their visitors were primarily families with small children who picnicked in the grounds when the weather was fine. The trees were planted well away from the open sections of the estate.
He shook his head. Soon he would have to tell someone. He knew his friend Buster had a truffle dog and soon it would be time to see if the trees produced more than nuts. He suspected that might let out a whiff of his secret as well. He was planning his approach carefully. He looked back to the trees. They hadn’t been disturbed before this and the ground was not torn up. He suspected deer. He hoped for deer as the pigs would prove more problematic. He reached the first of his wildlife cameras and took it down.
Ten til Midnight 