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.