Yes it has been a long time since my last blog, in fact it’s about three months. The reason being that I pulled a ligament or something in my hip at Christmas. It was so painful I could hardly stand at first. After a course of strong painkillers it has taken until now to get better enough not to risk damaging it again by working at the woods. So yesterday was a welcome visit. The weather was mild and sunny and the woods are bursting to life again. Mostly it’s ground cover such as wild garlic, wood anemones, lesser celandine, lords and ladies etc. The big trees are still bare but some of the smaller species are just starting. I didn’t intend doing a lot of hard work but I did have a few tasks to complete.
Of course a brew or two was essential and I chose to base my self at the shelter. I am a member of a spoonclub who meet once a month in a woodland setting and sit around a fire and carve a wooden spoon, spatula or bowl. The owner was dismantling an old bowl turning lathe and donated it to me, so the first job was to unload it from my camper van and store it in the shelter until I can reassemble it.
The other little job was to “plant” some mushroom mycelium. Before Christmas I bought a grey oyster mushroom growing kit. It had several crops and now seems to have finished. As an experiment I have broken the compost and mycelium into four pieces, dug a hole next some dead oak trees and put a piece in and covered it back up. I am hoping it will make it’s way into the dead wood and eventually produce some mushrooms on the trunks. I think it will take a long time if it actually does take.
This is a patch of wild garlic probably about a meter wide now. When I first acquired the woods, I wanted to add some diversity to the ground cover in the sycamore area which is mainly brambles, wood anemones and bluebells. So I took a few small clumps of the garlic from an area where there is plenty and replanted along the edge next to the ride. It has done incredibly well.
Buzzards were flying overhead several times and I think they are starting to look for a mate. I love to see them and hear their distinctive mewing call. This photo is one of my favourite locations in my woods. The slight hollow is actually the remains of an ancient ditch and bank feature. Nobody knows just how old it it but would have been created to either mark a boundary or possibly keep animals like deer, in or out.
I had plenty of walks to refamiliarize myself, it’s been so long that I had forgotten some of the features . This is the huge dead sycamore that blew down in Autumn saving me the scary job of felling it to make it safe. The dead leaner in the background was another part of this tree that blew down a few months before. It’s stuck on another tree and I was hoping the storms might have dislodged it. I might have to get the chainsaw to it at some point. It’s not close enough to the van to hit it if it fell so no danger. I’m leaving the big piece for nature to claim. It has opened up a bit of light so I might plant a few saplings.
It was such a lovely day that I didn’t want to leave. My camper needs a bit of re-stocking and organizing for sleeping over in, so I shall sort it soon and leave a sleeping bag in there so that if I visit and just decide to stay over, I can do. As it happens today is very wet and cold so it wouldn’t have been such a pleasure. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway!
