Yesterday was a beautiful dry and sunny day at the woods. In fact too dry for too long now. The trees are starting to show signs of distress from a shortage and some of the leaves turning brown and dropping. My pond is just a sludge of decaying leaf matter. Partly my fault because I should have cleared as much of the leaves out as I could but lack of visits there this year has meant many of the maintenance jobs have been neglected. However, the wasps are loving that sludge. A source of water and material for nest building and although most people hate wasps, they are an important component of the ecology and a friend of gardeners. They help pollinate and eat many harmful pests.

I started the day by lighting a fire. There were some rotten wooden garden chair and table remains that were unsightly and I wanted to tidy them up. The easiest way was to burn them. I know that burning wood that has been varnished is not ideal but how else do I dispose of them? Our council has closed our recycling centre and even if I did take them to somewhere like that, how do they dispose of them? Incinerate probably. So I thought burning was my best option rather than letting them rot and pollute the ground. No perfect solution to the problem but it seemed the least harmful to me. Apologies to anyone who is offended by that. I don’t like it either but we are all polluting much worse than that every day in some way. I did have a couple of brews on the fire and enjoyed that.

The woods were incredibly quiet and hardly any birds to be seen. A wren and two crows were all I saw. At this time of year the birds go very quite. They are exhausted from the breeding season and also moulting which compromises their ability to fly, so they take a welcome break. This might have been a victim of that compromise. The remaining feathers of a predated wood pigeon. They appear to have been plucked out suggesting it was killed by a predatory bird.

Other jobs included loading up three trugs with firewood logs to finish filling my logstore at home and some more scything of my paths. The brambles have run riot in my absence and I need to be able to move around a little without getting constantly snagged and prickled. Tough and hot work but necessary. The other job was to net off a hazel stool from deer browsing. I had coppiced it in spring but didn’t have time to net it then. I thought I would have been back more frequently to do that but not so and the deer have eaten off the tops of all the new growth. It will recover but netting it will help. By now the new shoots would have been at least five feet high already. The long ones you can see are what I left on when I cut it back.

One of my woodland neighbours, who I haven’t seen for ages, was in his woods chilling out with his wife, making stew and bread over a fire. I had a walk over and spent some time catching up. It was so lovely to be sharing their company in this beautiful setting. I always like to take people to see mine but there is something unique and satisfying about being with other woodland owners who are equally caring and passionate about it. They kindly offered to share their food too but I had just eaten and was pretty full but thanks S. (I know you read this blog and your offer was much appreciated).

I hope to be back there soon and spend a night if the weather holds up enough. Not that I am purely a fair weather person but sitting around a fire at night in the pouring rain is not a great recipe, though not impossible. I once stayed over a few years ago. Had just got my fire going nicely for cooking over when the skies darkened, the wind blew up which told me a downpour was eminent. I fixed a tarp up to sit under and made a Heath Robinson contraption out of a wooden pallet to create a lean-to roof over my fire. The rain came down in a torrent. The fire hissed but stayed lit as I sat dry under the tarp. The experience was fantastic.