Vast quantities of material have come off the hedge along the side of the meadow. The Systems Administrator had a go at some of the taller bits this morning with the pole saw, and spent a couple of hours feeding the thinner branches through the shredder, and the meadow is still covered with piles of pieces of hedge, the more solid to be separated out between shredding and firewood, the twiggiest and prickliest to go straight to the bonfire heap.
We had the best of the sunshine in the morning, but it never got terribly warm, so I took advantage of the fact that the bees weren't flying to cut back the brambles encroaching on the beehives. By lunchtime I had quite a tidy looking apiary. I hope they aren't too confused when they next come out and find their surroundings drastically altered. I cut a number of seedling trees down while I was at it, that had managed to gain a foothold in the rough grass, or keep their heads above the brambles. The most common species was ash, but alder was running it a close second even though the meadow is not especially damp. I have let some alders grow up at the far end where we could do with something to screen an especially large telegraph pole, and not all the Italian alders I planted years ago survived. Italian alder, Alnus cordata, is recommended in books as a screening tree, fast growing, glossy leaved and tolerant of poor soil, but I'm perfectly happy with native alder, Alnus glutinosa, if that's what wants to grow there.
I found healthy patches of bluebells under the brambles. The books say that the native wild bluebell is a poor coloniser, spreading only slowly into new areas, but we have odd ones popping up all around the garden. Mind you, I think I've read in one book that alder scarcely manages to spread by seed, and that's clearly not the case here.
Half hidden under the wreckage of an ivy covered mature ash that toppled into the garden but still has enough roots in the ground to keep growing I found a young Azara microphylla, a small leaved, evergreen, shade tolerant and slightly tender tree, which has vanilla scented flowers in late winter or early spring. This one may even have been grateful for the shelter provided by the encircling branches of the fallen ash, but it can't stay in there indefinitely. Besides, I don't want an almost horizontal ash growing across the garden. The Systems Administrator had begun to trim some of its outer branches, and I continued the job, being careful not to drop any pieces on the Azara. Removing the highest placed ones without disaster is going to be a nerve wracking process. The Azara did so well to survive the original collapse, it would be a shame to crush it at this stage.
The ash was already starting to send up vertical shoots from its prostrate trunk, as is the way of fallen trees that are not dead. If we take it back to the fence it can send up as many as it likes, until chalara gets it, which I'm afraid it probably will. The mass of ivy almost but not quite clobbered a tree heather and a small leaved conifer. In both cases the part of the crown that was inside the ivy mass has died, while the branches that remained exposed to the light are fine. Rabbits are digging around the base of another tree heather. This is gardening at the frontier.
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