An early start for the tree surgeons. And five hours later there is a marked difference in what the garden looks like.

We’ve lost trees over our stewardship of this house and its garden. We’ve gained quite a few saplings but several van loads have been now been driven away bearing overgrown branches, leaves and bushes, and that’s just in a couple of months. Way too much to compost!

The tree surgeons were up the tree on climbing ropes. Nothing would get me up there for love nor money. But they are trained and I watched the manoeuvres from inside. Oh I forgot to say it’s been horrendously wet today. I don’t DO gardening in the rain.

We also now have decimated buddleia stumps. And the oldest apple tree has been cut down to a living stump. I look forward to seeing whether it grows again. The apples are not like modern day supermarket apples; a bit sour to be devoured raw, but they do make good crumbles.

The branches that were taken down were efficiently chippered by the machine which was brought out and perched by our garden gate. The gates were left open which meant a restricted dog. T was not impressed and has started using his voice more to express that frustration but when I put his long lead on to allow him to go outside he realised how wet he’d get and happily retreated to the sofa.

Plum trees (which we only identified as plum in the last couple of years) were cut back severely after ten years of pretty gentle clipping. A garden fence panel needs replacing as the tree had grown through it. A few more branches could have come off, but our escape artist would find his way out through the gap those would leave if they were taken down. More maintenance decisions to be made.