Diary of a man and his woodland

A blog about a man's dream to own a small woodland.

Monthly Archives: March 2023


by Leave a comment

First flowers of spring

It was a lovely warm spring day at the woods yesterday. Hard to believe a week ago we had snow. The first flowers of spring are opening, these are blackthorn, the flowers emerge before any leaves. You will see lots of these spiky shrubby trees around the fields and hedges full of snowy white blossom. Wood Anemones are also starting to open.

I put bird food out, then some neighbours arrived. We chatted and before I knew it, half the morning was gone and no work done. Nice just to enjoy some company and in such a lovely setting too. The main jobs were to bring home logs, chop and stack a few more but priority was to go around all the nest boxes, examine and empty them of last years material and record which ones had been used. Most of them appear to have and some had lots of tiny fresh droppings, meaning some birds were just using them to shelter at night and why not! One was completely destroyed by wood-boring insects so I need to make one or two new ones.

Wild garlic or Ramsons are looking lush and fresh. I love this plant, not because of it’s culinary uses but because of it’s lovely shiny green leaves and the smell when you walk through it. I took a tin of mushroom soup for lunch and the thought passed through my mind to add some Ransoms but decided it might overpower the flavour of the mushrooms. Wish I’d been less cautious now and tried it. I want to do some food foraging this year and actually try things. I’m a bit guilty of learning things then not bothering to put that knowledge into action.

My pond was looking very un-pond-like. The beech trees around have filled it with dead leaves. I used to try to clear them out but for the last couple of years haven’t bothered. As far as being a pond goes, it’s not worked out. All the oxygenator plants died due to lack of light but it’s useful as a drinking and bathing place for wildlife. I spent a while hand scooping piles of leaves out, still loads in there but it looks a bit healthier now, previously all you could see was wet leaves, now there is a surface to be seen. The smell of the rotting leaves is nasty.

That’s all for this week, hopefully I will be camping over before long and looking forward to that.


by Leave a comment

Early spring in the woods but cold

Flowers on box tree

Spring is definitely showing in the woods, leaves of hazel, elder, honeysuckle are opening. Wild garlic, bluebells, dog’s mercury, lords and ladies, nettles and wood anemones are pushing through the ground and opening. We are into March already and inching toward the Spring equinox. Photo below is lords and ladies also known as cuckoo pint and many other folk names.

Although my main purpose for the visit yesterday was to carry on with the log splitting, I spent the first hour just wandering around and observing, sometimes straying into areas I don’t normally visit. I noticed a few things that might be jobs to do next visit This old oak tree has the remains of a dead branch. Most of it has rotted but the centre heartwood will stay on for years. The tree bark has attempted to grow around it to seal it but is unable to. If the branch had broken close to the trunk it would have. So I might do a little bit of surgery to help keep it healthy by sawing off the dead branch close to the trunk. There’s an area where the branch joins the trunk called the collar. The cells here are supercharged to grow and effectively heal any open cuts. So by cutting off the dead wood, it gives the tree an opportunity to heal over it. If you look further up the trunk you can see two lumps where this has happened successfully.

My neighbours arrived, we had a brew and a catch up but the cold air was prompting me to start some work to warm up. I set-to chopping and stacking more of the sycamore logs until I was starting to flag and ready for a lunch break. I don’t rest long as I get restless when there’s still work to do and the hours soon fly by. For a bit of variety I started clearing the brash (small branches from the tops of the felled trees) and piling them onto an old brash hedge that had now rotted down to about a quarter of it’s original height. A few tree guards on saplings had been knocked over accidentally so I put new stakes in and secured them vertically again.

On my walkabout earlier I spotted this young laurel bush growing robustly. This is an invasive species planted in woodlands around the country by the Victorians as cover for game birds. There are areas in other people’s woodlots here where this is rife and it seeds and germinates easily. So removing this is on my next job list.

This is an interesting thing I found on my walk. It’s hazel and what caused this was a sycamore I felled about five years ago, hit this rod and partially snapped it, leaving it horizontal. It’s continued to send new shoots upwards. In a few more years, these can be cut from the horizontal branch keeping a short piece either side to make walking sticks with T shaped handles. Happy accident!

I chopped and stacked a few more logs but by now my back was complaining so I called it a day. Here’s how it’s looking now. One more session and it will be full and can be left to season and I can crack on with other projects.