bunn

We've decided that we're going to sell the boat after this summer (it's not cheap to run, and the engine servicing & repairs in particular are painfully pricy). I'm going to miss being able to run down to the open sea and out to the islands in the spring, I know, so I'm making the best of it while we've got it.

( Many many photos.  )

Tree News

The sycamore tree that was leaning perilously over the neighbour's house (with scary rotten side to the trunk) is no more! Pp decided to put it up as a 'job available' on Mybuilder, and we immediately got a contact from a shiny new young garden and tree management company, run by two shockingly young yet highly competent people who quoted very reasonably for the tree to be removed. They had the relevant certifications & insurances, so we went for it, and wow, did they work. They were here from about 10 am to after 8 and hung themselves by ropes from the tree with chainsaws to take bits off. Then they chipped it all, and took away the logs!

I asked their advice about the elm tree next to the sycamore, and was delighted to hear that they thought it was in fine fettle and needed no work done. You don't see that many elms about, so I really wanted to keep it (assuming it wasn't also a terrible peril to the neighbour's roof). It looks very fine now you can properly see the shape of it - though you can see it was sort of leaning away from the sycamore a bit. With luck, it will just fill out a bit on that side. There is the ever-present risk of Dutch Elm disease, but I am hoping that the wild sea-winds may be enough to keep the beetles at bay. Certainly there's no sign of DED yet.

I asked the tree guys to leave the big rotten stump of the sycamore in place, hoping it will continue to rot and perhaps become hollow and enliven the local environment. It may shoot from the left over bits, but if it does, it's now small enough that I can easily manage the shoots with loppers.

The garden has been becoming slowly less garden and more jungle.  I quite like it a bit overgrown: I prefer that to the kind of garden where each plant is surrounded by a neatly-raked border of empty brown earth, or everything is covered in gravel.    I like the birds to have space, and to have bees and dragonflies and random flowers popping up everywhere.

But my mother visited recently and left wagging her head and saying 'I don't know what can be done about your garden'.   And she does have a point. The worry that one day we will not actually be able to get beyond the patio without a machete is a real one.
( garden progress. )

 As the price of oil and gas has gone up, and up, wood burning stoves have become the thing to have.   And as woodburning stoves have become popular, wood which previously had no economic value has become worth paying money for. 

Here in the Tamar Valley, there is a lot of land which until recently was more or less economically valueless.  It was ex-mining land, covered in hazel, beech and oak plus in some places the leftovers of old orchards, or small conifer plantations that someone thought might make a few bob once upon a time.   The fields are steep and small, and some of them are probably contaminated as well: access is poor and there are areas of woodland that exist pretty much because it wasn't worth anyone's time to keep the land cleared. 

Now the wood is worth the effort, people have started to cut the hedges (today I saw overgrown oaks in a hedge cleared that must have been fifty years old at least) and clear the coppices.   It will be interesting to see if this change persists and results in a move to more traditionally coppiced woodland, or if the land is cleared once then put to some other purpose.