This afternoon we finally got to have a session with the pole mounted chainsaw. Afterwards the Systems Administrator pronounced it a handy bit of kit, but too heavy to use for very long at a time, despite being one of the lightest electric models available.
It is a two person job, because the one holding the saw can't judge how things look and which branches need to come off while standing directly underneath them. I stood well clear, for a good view, and in case the SA accidentally allowed the cutting end to drop rapidly. Trying to explain which branch you want taken off, and where the cut should be, when you and the person doing the cutting have entirely different viewpoints, is like an arboricultural version of one of those teamwork exercises, in which somebody describes an object while the others have to draw it.
We started on the higher branches overhanging the ditch bed, that I couldn't reach from the Henchman. The aim was not to face up the trees around the boundary like shrubs in a supermarket car park, but to remove enough material to let more light into the borders, while keeping a natural, relaxed appearance, with some branches still allowed to overhang the ditch bed. The Systems Administrator ended up removing what amounted to a surprisingly large pile of vegetation, when it was all collected up. There is one chunky hazel branch that will have to come out at some stage, but was too high to reach without the platform, even with the pole saw, and we agreed that it would have to wait until next winter, since growth in the bed is too advanced to try and get the Henchman in there now.
In a fit of optimism I suggested that if the weather was decent before Christmas, and we were both fit and well, we could aim to do the next round of pruning before the New Year. Well, I can dream, but in an ideal world we wouldn't be dropping lumps of hazel and willow on the borders when the snowdrops and hellebores are full out.
We looked at the next run of hedge, on the slope behind the bog bed, and I explained hopefully which branches I wanted reduced, and the general principle that the hedge needed to be fatter at the bottom than the top, instead of having a vase shaped profile as at present, with branches too high for me to reach from ground level growing out over the bed and casting shade. The SA understood the concept, but was unwilling to cut anything without my being there, in case of misunderstandings, and said that in any case the next phase would have to wait until tomorrow.
The flowers of the Crocus tommasinianus in the bottom lawn were stretched wide open in the sunshine, looking very pretty in shades of purple and lilac. They are much denser in some parts of the lawn than others, which leaves me wondering whether I have been uneven in planting them, or whether they are beginning to naturalise, multiplying where conditions are to their liking, and dying out in the bits of lawn that are too wet, or too shady, or with too rank grass, or otherwise not to their liking. If you walk through woodland with truly wild bluebells, you will see how the leaves form dense cover in some places while being entirely absent in others, according to whether the local conditions are quite right for them. It is a far more subtle effect than the block planting usually applied to roadside daffodils.
I was pleased to see in a dark corner a good clump of leaves and one breaking bud of Cardamine quinquefolia. I planted one lonely specimen a couple of years ago, which I'm pretty sure I bought from the Chatto gardens. It is one of those spring flowering woodlanders which disappears fairly soon after flowering, and I'd forgotten where I'd put it, and when I thought about it concluded it had probably died, so it was a nice surprise to discover it very much alive. It is in a particularly dark and inhospitable corner, in the angle of the hedge and with large conifers on either side, so it would have had every excuse to die. It is supposed to spread to form a large patch fairly quickly, but that might be asking a bit much, where I've put it.
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