Wood Work

Our landscape contractor, Chris, came to give the east end’s hawthorn hedge its annual trim recently. We keep it high, not just for privacy but as a windbreak for the rest of the linear copse, house and garden. Didn’t want a formal agricultural straight topping but a softer more undulating one instead, which assistant Charley managed with his long blade electric trimmer.

Kim wanted to give the vegetable garden and greenhouse more light and space so we sacrificed some tree cover at the top end. The willow was starting to push the field wall out too. A severe cut of the two main trunks leaves just a few shoots and these will thicken and develop over the next few years to gradually replace the lost limbs.

More reluctantly, we took the neigbouring alder down and its trunk is now cut into logs and stacked to dry. The exposed grain has a distinct orange/red appearance and once dried are rated a good burn for any stove. Like the willow alder will pollard but growth will be much slower.

Raked and brushed most of this year’s leaf fall where it had piled up over gravel and grass and shovelled them into an old gravel dumpy bag, and dragged it to my leaf mold pile next to the newly decapitated willow tree. The idea was to first take the two years worth of leaves that had been composting to hummus under its cover and put that on the vegetable boxes. Alas, it was not to be. My fork bit into a fibrous tangled mass of fine roots…the willow had long since beat me to this food source! Lesson learnt I now re-bagged the new leaf crop into a cavernous black plastic bag and sealed it down. That will both warm it, help break the tissue down and most importantly stop the leaves being devoured by the hungry roots.

Have also donned the wellies and wielded a net in the wildlife pond to fish out leaves from the neighbouring oak that have fallen into it. Too many of them in a pond quickens the gradual silting up process when they sink to the bottom to rot. 

All the cut willow stems are now on the bonfire pitch in our field. The birds have done a strip search for grubs and insects while the current flock of our neighbour’s hog ewes have been assiduously nibbling away at all the buds and leaves they can stretch to.

Willow accumulated from the latest cull will make easy work for the chipper, as the wands and branches being slender, straight and knot free go down its throat as smoothly as ice cream down a human’s. I’ll continue to fill the dumpy bag with these good quality easy chippings which will be used for mulching round the garden and occasionally adding to the compost mix.

As we move into December I pick the last fruits of autumn, the little Christmas pippins, getting them in before birds finish them off. Nothing much to look at and they still cling to the bare branches. I love these cox like apples as a daily snack – they’ve a superb crispy sweet bite.

Out front, the crop of red berries shine out against the dark leaves of the holly, a cheering sight when the hours of daylight are so rationed.  Not until they are starving will the birds venture to devour them.