Yesterday was another day of hard work. I want to get the felled trees off the ground before the bluebells and anemones burst forth. Spring is definitely on it’s way, some leaves are opening now, this is hazel.

This is Dog’s Mercury emerging, the Wood Anemones aren’t showing yet but the bluebells have been poking through since January but they will get overtaken by the anemones when it comes to flowering time.

There was still a tree and a half to cut up with the chainsaw and I just managed it on a tankful of fuel. The next arduous task was to load them into a wheelbarrow and move them about fifty metres back to the logpile for splitting and stacking – about eight trips.

Time for a coffee break and to watch the birds on the feeders. Below is a Nuthatch

A Coal Tit just departing with a seed to find a safe place to eat.

A Bluetit taking a seed.

Back to work, chopping and stacking the logs. People comment on how neat my log pile is. That is just a by-product of building a stable pile when it’s high. If you don’t, then you find it collapsed one day because a squirrel has run over it. It’s a bit like dry stone walling. I take my time, picking up three or four logs then assessing how best to place each one. I build like Jenga trying to make sure the middle log is narrower than the two outside ones so the next layer doesn’t rock and if possible, slightly tilted inward or backward. It is a very mindful activity too and a sort of work of art. Instead of a tiring chore, it becomes a pleasure and concludes with a satisfied feeling that you have filled your store for a winter’s worth of warmth and created something pleasant to the eye.

Hopefully my next visit will finish the chopping and stacking and I can move on to some other tasks, like cleaning out the bird nest boxes, they will want to move in soon. I’ll leave you with a this photo of woodland loveliness.

A lovely day to be at the woods yesterday. There is a definite feel of spring as more ground plants push through the surface and birds are more vocal. I heard song thrush, tawny owl and spotted woodpecker as well as the usual nuthatches, and various tits. I’m hoping before long I can spend a night here in my camper. I haven’t slept in it yet, I just need to prepare and psyche myself up for it.

It was another day for lots of work, I’m keen to get the felled trees moved before the bluebells and wood anemones take over the ground. I cut up two of them before my chainsaw jammed up. It was enough for one day as I had to wheelbarrow them back to this logshed, chop and stack them. Still plenty more to do but the shed is filling up nicely now and will provide a winter’s worth of fuel for my woodburner in a couple of years time.

I hardly did anything productive till late morning but it was so relaxing just to wander around, looking at things and taking photos. This strange tree is a crab apple that I bought and planted about seven years ago. It’s developed these oddities which are burrs. They are fairly common on apple trees and are an inherited defect thought to be due to the rootstock that they have been grafted onto. The growers choose varieties of rootsock that are vigorous growers. These burrs are actually tiny roots growing out of the branches and it’s the trees survival mechanism when the growing conditions are not ideal. It’s possibly due to the shady nature of the woodland.

I found this potentially lovely walking stick. It’s another of the prized “barley twist” hazel and honeysuckle stems. I hope to work on it and make something special. I just had to have it.

Not much else to tell, so just a few more photos from the walkabaout.

This tree looks like a wooden man half buried upside down!

Not sure what they will grow into but signs of spring coming.

My eldest daughter has been asking to come to the woods for a while, so yesterday I picked her up and took her. I warned her that there was work to do and she is quite happy getting stuck in to a bit of forestry. Our first job was to try to remove the remains of a hung up tree from last week that was hanging like a pendulum. I took the Tirfor winch and thought it would pull out fairly easy. Here it is set up ready.

I tensioned it as far as it could be but it didn’t budge an inch. The top of the hung up piece has a fork and the base of that is wedged in the bottom of a fork in the standing tree. I thought the hung up fork would compress or squeeze in enough to pull out. I tried repositioning the pulley to a nearer tree for a different angle but nope – we had to give up. I could put a ladder up and cut the main piece off with a hand saw but I was feeling a bit shaky and didn’t want to risk it. It’s doing no harm and no risk to anyone so I guess I will leave it be, then in a couple of years when it’s dried out and become brittle, I might be able to pull it sideways and snap it off. It just looks ridiculous and amateurish (which it is).

The other main job was to start moving the sawn up logs from last week’s felling back to the logstore to be split and stacked. I couldn’t help admiring the woodsman’s scene and thinking it looked like a “proper” one.

Didn’t do much other work but it was plenty. We had a good long walk around, took some photos before heading home again. This is a small hazel tree that has honeysuckle winding it’s way up the stems. It has effectively strangled the branch and the hazel has responded by trying to grow around it’s tight grip which has caused this amazing spiral shape. These are known as barley twists and are very prized by walking stick makers. Unfortunately there is not enough straight section below the twist to make one but at some point I might cut it and make something else but for now I will let it be.

I’ll leave you with this photo. It’s a large sycamore I felled a few years ago. It was already diseased and dying but rather than cut it up for logs, I left it on the ground for nature to work it’s magic. The black strands are the mycelium (sort of like roots) of some sort of fungus which is working it’s way into the slowly decaying wood. Eventually it will send out it’s fruiting bodies that we know as mushrooms. They won’t the edible kind though.