Thurs 2 nd June

I think I have discovered a new talent for major tree pruning.!

Weeping Beech tree had got seriously out of hand and needed pruning.


But Weeping beech is now looking good, unfortunately you can now see the jungle where the 2 shrub beds are meant to be, underneath!




Now have a HUGE pile ( and I mean HUGE) of beech wood to shred and salvage various bits of wood for carving, turning etc.

Pleased with our days work though ( it took 4 hours to do, and the felled wood is under the tree waiting to be cleared away, tomorrow...)

Colours of Autumn

Some random photographs from my garden over the last few days, as I wandered around looking and smelling and enjoying a lovely sunny afternoon, watching the leaves fall to the ground ( heh heh I shall have those soon for leaf mould...)

and generally having a " just being" moment...well as much as one can, along with 2 cats and 6 chickens, of course!









This last shot, a lovely moonrise....




(Just a note about my photos....dear friends, I do NOT know why all my photos are now huge! I am doing the same as I always have done, nothing has changed at my end BUT now the photos all come out BIG...and sorry but unless I resize every single one first before publishing them I can't seem to fix it......I am not trying to make you look at my pictues in huge detail, honestly! I shall ask Blogger why this is now happening to me and see what the reply is.....Annoyingly although they are huge, a bit is cropped off the sides so to see the whole photo you STILL need to click on it.......( bangs head on the table.....) )

A fun day in the garden!

A chair!

My amazingly talented artist friend Tamsin came and cut some hazel from our wood a few weeks ago...and LOOK what she has done with it!




Tamsin takes commissions to make chairs.....

Yet MORE Forest School stuff!

I have spent the MOST amazing two days doing my Forest School Leader training practical woodland sessions over the last two days!

Making a camp to work under.
The site of our "tribal camp"

Part way through constructing our shelter
Our finished camp!


We have been in Aconbury Woods demonstrating that we can show the children how to use tools safely, teach them woodcraft stuff and have been making shelters and tools and generally being assessed on our skills , safe practice and ability to show children how to do stuff.

Something is eating my Spindle trees!! ( and the Bird cherry and the Acacia.....)

I have found out what the nasty little caterpillars are...the Spindle ( or Cherry...or Acacia) Ermine Moth...I shall have to remove the stems which have them weaving away, apparently...hmm a bit tricky on a 50 ft Acacia tree!!

Day 5 of Forest School

a day in the woods, making things,







baking things over a campfire





oooooooooo it was SUCH fun!!

planning sessions for children to have fun in the woods...

Oh I am SO inspired....

Tidying up in the Polytunnel

I spent today tidying up a bit and potting on some seedlings in the Polytunnel, as the rain kept on falling outside. I also tidied up the strawberry pots outside although I had to be a bit careful as I found some Newts having a swim in one of the plant pot saucers outside!





I was very careful to put them down in a safe place as we have lots of Newts ( of all three sorts) so I know where they like to hide.











I have potted on a lot of peppers and tomato plants, including some destined for the School veg garden and for sale at the School summer Fete.

The oldest tomato plants are now too big to stay in the cold frame inside the polytunnel so I have decided to chance putting them into their final pots in the open polytunnel. If there is a hard frost I shall have to cover them with fleece or something, but I hope to get a good early crop of toms!













Also am now regularly eating a selection of salads grown in the polytunnel - its really handy to have a big covered area to work in out of the rain as well!

Finally I went for a wander in the wood to look at the Bluebells..they were nodding their heads in the wind and the rain...but then the rain stopped, the wind dropped and the sun broke through the clouds...just long enough for me to take a photograph!

A walk in our wood

Wild Daffs!!

I mentioned in "Kinky Daffodils" that the wild daffodils in the wood didn't seem to be so susceptible to being knocked over by the gales. We have had some VERY strong winds and torrential rain here last night and today...fortunately no lasting damage so far....but I thought I had better show you how lovely the wild daffodils DO look, just in case we get more bad weather tonight and they get flattened, too!!










Oh and I have JUST spotted some VERY early bluebells in the wood!!

Why shred??

Some of you may have noticed that whenever we fell a tree or prune one we chip the stuff we cannot keep as firewood. And I got asked why we did this?? So I thought I would put up a post explaining why we DO chip so much stuff.





We have several compost bins dedicated to chipped tree shreddings...

and I can take out what I want to add to the compost bins or to mulch around the garden, as and when I want. AND I can put some in the hens' run for them to scratch around in!!

We DO burn stuff on bonfires which is infected or a pernicious weed or which is too much like hard work to shred BUT often, if it is too small to have as firewood, we do tend to chip it .

And if we DO burn twigs etc the ash goes on the compost bins!!!

We have a trusty Bosch shredder/chipper which is great!! It runs off of our ( 100% renewable Good Energy) electricity and we get to make lots of shreddings for the cost of the electricity only. This saves buying in bark chippings for mulch!!

and a bonus is we know the chippings are uncontaminated by any pesticides or herbicides, as they have come from our own trees...which are, of course, unsprayed.

Also shreddings are really useful to add to the compost heap and also make compost ( rather slowly) in their own right...

so we use the chippings to mulch, add to compost and we are planning on getting a new woodburner soon which will burn chippings...so it all helps reduce our Carbon Dioxide footprint and be more self sufficient.

Apple tree pruning and other tree stuff..........

This fine, dry weather has made the sap start to rise in the trees!! and has made pruning the apple trees an imperative...so today compostman and I were doing just that!!




and felling a Silver Birch inthe garden which had gotten a little TOO huge..and was overshadowing the fruit trees and vegetable garden...so sadly it had to come down

Still it made lots of lovely logs for the woodburner and lots of lovely shreddings for the compost bins and as mulch in the garden!!