My best friend yesterday. The woods were alive with small birds when I arrived. Singing and calling out looking for a mate or announcing their territory. I truly love this little bird, it hangs around my work and rest area. Comes to see me when I arrive, always exploring where I am working looking for tit-bits. There’s more to it than just taking advantage of a free meal though. Experts say they have learned to follow large mammals because they disturb the ground and reveal invertebrates. Why don’t other birds do that too? There’s something special about Robins. After shifting a load of heavy logs, I sat exhausted for a rest. It landed on a nearby branch and just sat with me for quarter of an hour, as if to keep me company. Not singing this time but just chatting quietly and resting with me. I wish I could speak “Robin”. Special occasions these.

It was to be another day of hard work cutting up the remaining felled trees and wheel-barrowing them away to stack. I’m conscious of time moving on now. Recent lockdown robbed me of valuable working time at the woods. The area is filling up with Wood Anemones and Bluebells and walking around shifting logs tramples them down, plus where the felled tree trunks are lying is preventing them from emerging. I have another day’s work to complete it, then I can leave it to do it’s own thing without disturbance. It was really hard work but there is pleasure in it. I feel more alive when lugging heavy pieces around somehow.

Much has changed in the week since my last visit and coincidentally we have just reached the Spring Equinox when the length of night and day is the same. It seems like the tap of life has been switched on in the woods too. It’s the start of good things to come in more ways than one. Last year at this time, we entered the first Covid lockdown and I missed out on much of the Spring loveliness at the woods. I didn’t do any camping either. As the second wave of Covid retreats and vaccines are rolling out at an amazing rate in this country, I feel like this year will be a much better one for enjoying my woods and being able to socialise again. It’s been a hard slog, it’s not over yet and probably will start peaking again later in the year, but for the meantime, let’s make the most of it. Camping is on my definite “To do” list this year.

Wood Anemones starting to flower. They will carpet my woods for a few weeks, taking advantage of the light before the canopy closes again. A few years ago I dug up a few small clumps of Wild Garlic and replanted them along the ride edge in the Northern compartment. This is where I am doing the felling. It’s an area of mainly sycamore, planted in the 1960s and needing thinning. Ground cover there is limited, mostly Bluebells and Anemones in Spring, then the ferns and of course brambles. So I am trying to increase diversity with a little bit of transplanting from further down the woods where there is lots of variety. The garlic is one of my successes and I now have some healthy, thriving clumps which are slowly spreading.

Not much more to tell so I’ll just leave you with another photo of my best woodland pal. Standing on my mini fireplace about a metre from where I sit.

This photo captures the title, life and death co-existing together and reminds us that all things are temporal but from death and decay springs new life and the cycle continues on and on.

I arrived early yesterday armed with chainsaw and PPE gear to start cutting up and moving the six or seven sycamore trees I felled before Christmas. They lay among the Bluebell and Wood Anemone shoots and I want to clear as much away as possible before they race ahead and cover the woodland floor. So it was going to a hard day’s graft but first I filled the bird feeders. As usual, a host of small, feathery creatures descended and eagerly tucked in. I sat and watched with a smile on my face for a while before cracking on with the jobs.

Cutting up the long tree trunks and shifting them is really hard work, back breaking but yet hugely satisfying. I’ve had a really painful arthritic toe for a few years now and over the last year it had become so painful, that it was making me limp and actually restricting how long I could walk for. The thought of not being able to get out and enjoy a decent walk or a good long day working in the woods was depressing me. Reluctantly I decided to talk to my GP about it, thinking that nothing much could be done but they gave me a steroid injection in the joint. Sometimes it works, sometimes not they told me. At first the results seemed disappointing but then after about two weeks, it suddenly improved immensely. I spent a lot of hours on my feet yesterday walking back and forth with a barrow load of heavy logs and apart from a few twinges, it was relatively pain free. I tell you this in case you are suffering something similar but like me, are reluctant to bother the NHS about it. Do it.

The pond I built over a year ago is looking pretty devoid of life right now. I always knew it wouldn’t do well due to the heavy overshadowing of trees but it is a valuable drinking and bathing place for birds and other animals. It’s still a bit early to know if frogs or toads will spawn in it here but I’m keeping fingers crossed. That’s about all I have this time, Spring is definitely here at the woods, Bluebells, Wood Anemone, Wild Garlic, Dog’s Mercury and all the usual early spring plants are coming out to play again.

Since we went into the third lockdown, I hadn’t visited the woods until yesterday. According to the government website, forestry is a protected industry, necessary for the supply of timber for fuel and building which means that as long as workers follow the guidelines for Covid protection, they can carry on. Why haven’t I been before now then? I would have loved to but stories of police stopping and fining people for travelling out of their areas has put me off. Would over enthusiastic PC Plod with his extra powers know what the guidance for foresters is? Nah. So here are my reasons for taking the slight risk of getting stopped and why I should go.

We have run out of logs at home for the wood-burner. Two months is a long time between visits for me to feel happy. I needed to check my property for damage. My mental health certainly needs a boost with a day in the woods and the risks of passing or receiving the virus are virtually nil when spending a day in the woods on my own. I think my readers will all agree that my reasoning was sound but for the sake of covering my back when making this public, I feel that this disclaimer was somewhat necessary. I could simply have not published this post but I know that some folks really like to hear about my woodland and I enjoy writing about it. So here goes.

It was a glorious, clear sunny day. The woodland looked reassuringly familiar yet in some ways not. Signs of Spring were not as evident as I had expected. Bluebell leaves still quite small and no sign yet of Wood Anenomies. The felled trees that had to be left on the ground are still easily accessible without trampling too much new growth. First job was to put some food out for the birds. One of my woodland neighbours, a local guy who walks the woods regularly, has kindly filled my feeders occasionally. The birds were soon down to take advantage – Blue, Great and Coal tits, Nuthatches, Robins and Dunnock all came down to feed and started the magic for me of being back in nature with the freedom of my own little piece of woodland.

Second job was to fill my trugs with logs to take home. A robin always watches over close by, ready to take some small invertebrates that I have uncovered when removing logs.

I said the woodland had a certain unfamiliarity about it. As I did my slow tour of the woods I discovered several areas of damage. My firepit was half full of soil as if someone had dropped a spadeful in it for spite. Other molehills nearby gave me the answer – how bizarre! My shelter has a huge hole in the roof and some of the supports have collapsed. They were starting to rot but the damage was as if somebody had deliberately pulled down on them rather than caused by winds. Several small rotten hazel trees also looked that way. The front wall of my composting toilet had collapsed. Had vandals been in? It didn’t add up, nothing else of my personal belongings had been disturbed. However it did leave me with a sinking feeling, not just at the thought of possible interlopers but at the work needed to repair the damage. It wasn’t until the evening when I contacted my neighbour, who told me he had some damage from the snow that the lightbulb went on. Of course, the weight of snow could be quite substantial, pushing down on the shelter and the rotten trees causing them to break.

I returned to my woodland cafe, lit the Kelly Kettle and made a nice filter coffee accompanied with a piece of my favourite fruit cake made by my wife. Sitting in the sun, watching and listening to the birds, a line at the end of Van Morrison’s Coney Island came to mind. “Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time”?

I spent a large part of my day just walking around observing, sitting and being in the moment. Getting a good dose of my woodland. A pair of blue tits flitted together, the female shaking her wings and tail in a seductive, inviting manner for the male and investigating one of the nest boxes. In and out as they sussed a new home and taking ownership for their nesting activities. All is well in their world right now.

I checked the feral honey bees that live in the Little Owl box. There was no sign at my last visit but I figured if they were still alive and present, the sun would have brought them out. Yep, still there. Another little piece of much needed joy. I shifted a few newly felled logs onto my woodpile, it felt good to be doing real physical work again. What a fantastic day. I’ll leave you with a few more photos.