Tree surgery

The tree man has been and gone and we have finally cleared up and all the cut wood has been collected and stacked. I was rather disappointed at missing him cutting down nearly all the trees as I'd had to go out that first morning - this guy works so fast! I did however get to watch him dealing with the damaged weeping willow which was the most exciting to watch.

It was rather exhausting for us as we'd agreed with him that we would drag all the branches dotted about the garden/woodland up to his chipping machine - orginally he had quoted for hire of a tractor to haul it around the woodland to where the trees had been felled, but this was really not practical, let alone the fact a tractor would completely trash the lawn. Only you don't really realise quite how many branches there are, even off the tall and spindly trees that were being felled, until you start to clear them up.

Sadly but with good timing, one of our apple trees decided to uproot and fall over during windy weather whilst he was here, so again we made use of his chipper and hauled all the branches over the road from the orchard and up our steep sloping drive. That was killing! One good thing was that we had a 3 day break before he came back to finish off the work.... oh to be young and fit! He also cut our huge Leylandii hedges, a job that my OH used to do but eventually gave up as some parts are about 3 metres high and really deep, and unless you do this kind of thing for a living and/or are built like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be, it's rather too much!

Most of my photos are pretty naff as I had little time and only took snaps with my compact camera. I was also in a hurry as I wanted to keep some of the chippings and was lucky that he had some really nice ash chips in his truck from a previous job which were not full of leaves. So I gained muscles shovelling them out of his truck and I've spread them all over my veg patch paths hiding all the mud and weeds, so for the moment it looks rather smart!

Except the darn peach tree and currants are now dropping leaves over my smart paths!

These machines cost a fortune but they are amazing to watch and so quick and efficient
and all the chippings just shoot into the back of the truck.
That pile of branches is a fraction of what we dragged around the garden.

We also had two sycamores taken out of the chicken run - this one in particular that was right up by the shed was getting far too big and all the rain water that is collected off the roof into a 500 litre water butt was always tainted by something from the tree (aphids?) and the water was brown and stinking.

Bye bye sycamore.

The poor old Granny Smith apple that is no more. I collected even more
apples from it as my OH cut off all the branches!

Oak - seems a shame but these trees were so overcrowded
and all growing into each other and other trees which
I wanted to preserve and allow them space to grow,
not to mention allowing more light in.

The following are the pictures I took of him working up in the weeping willow. It's hard to take pics when the sky is grey and not end up with silhouettes. In this picture it's hard to see but the broken branch is to the right of his head just balancing on another branch (which also had to be pruned because that had a lot of damage too), and the branch it had split from, to the left of his head, had such a long rip he had to cut that off too. So it now looks a bit bare and odd shaped and I just hope it will regenerate. I have seen weeping willows after radical pruning grow new branches so fingers crossed!

I was glad to see he'd tied himself to the tree
but I think a fair amount of balance was needed as well.

Eeeks! That branch was wobbling too!

The mess!

Afterwards - nice clean cuts but with a rather bare bit which of course is the
bit that used to hang out over the pond.

And here is just some of the wood stacked - one and a half stacks behind Hallie of wood that doesn't need splitting, and a fraction of the big logs (lichen covered) to the right that do need splitting. There's tons more piles of wood dotted about the place waiting until my OH's back recovers enough to get the hydraulic log splitter out. But no rush as this wood needs to dry out for several years. So we gained about €200 worth of firewood, mixed oak, sycamore, elm and willow out of what we spent having this work done.

Hallie wanted to be in the picture.

Now we await next summer to see just how more light is let into the woodland area which had become very dark; I can already see more light and openness in the beach area next to the pond which had become too overgrown with trees.

A conifer stump that the same guy cut down about 3 years ago
with Turkey Tail fungus growing on top of the stump and
unknown fungus around the outside.

Here's a link to the tree guy's website and I'd recommend him to anyone needing any of the services he offers, as he's quick, efficient, cleans up after himself and is very professional and good at what he does. And his prices are very reasonable! He is based near Fougeres.

http://www.naturelagage.fr/

Lazy summer days

Five warm sunny days in a row and thankfully yesterday was more cloudy so felt cooler. This morning of course there's been a bit of drizzle but that's because our firewood is being delivered! But now the sun's out again and it's the last thing we need when we've got 4 cordes of wood arriving which need to be sorted and stacked.

However, apart from having a sad dustbowl of a garden again, it's been nice having a bit of summer. The problem with sudden heat is not having the time to get used to it, and more importantly, getting into the routine of how to deal with it.

My poor Buddleia - it's one of the first plants to droop.
Butterflies aren't interested in it either. Useless plant.

That means getting all outdoor chores, especially in the veg patch, done in the morning. Close the bedroom shutters at lunchtime to keep the heat out. Afternoons mean enforced laziness, either sit in the shade by the pond eating ice cream watching the wildlife or spend a bit of time indoors prepping food for the evening's BBQ. Or, spend time in full sun photographing all the butterflies that love the sun and warmth! Or try out the boy's new toy.....

Messing about on the water....

It was fun!

Now that the pond level has dropped a bit already there is more of interest to watch, as an adult moorhen is back and a juvenile appeared the other day which was being chased off by the adult. Also we've got a Grey Wagtail already visiting which likes the muddy and rocky edges and is fun to watch with its constant tail wagging (they are attractive mostly bright yellow birds, despite their name). I can see little birds coming down to drink under the overhang of the shrubs and butterflies have been flitting over the water and drinking on the wing, just like the swallows do, only in slow motion. Dragonflies are flying about all over the place now.

The pond level has already dropped about 6 inches - it was up to the edge of these plants.

We managed to capture a dragonfly which luckily decided to stop for a while up in a spruce tree!

So far unidentified. I've looked on many sites but can't find it!

My OH took the one above, but I managed to get this next one in flight! That was amusing; it kept flying round and round in one of our woodland clearings and I just kept on snapping on various different camera settings. Sometimes you get lucky!

A different dragonfly

Late afternoon/early evening unfortunately the hard work of watering the drooping garden starts in earnest. I've spent two entire evenings this last week hosepiping my flower beds and I haven't even got all the way around the garden yet. It's a bit like painting the Golden Gate Bridge; by the time I've done it all it's time to start all over again. Oh and then I have the lettuce to do in the veg patch which needs copious watering every single day to try to keep it from bolting. Then BBQ at about 9.30pm and finally collapse in a heap inside about 10pm, not forgetting to open the bedroom shutters and windows wide to let some cooler air in!

The ducks have the right idea and spend most of the day snoozing.
The grass is still quite lush here on the lake bank as the water is still fairly full
and this is not the really dry rocky side where the buddleia is.

Doesn't help either that our 500 litre waterbutt by the duck shed decided to suddenly crack open wasting all the contents! We hurriedly bought a replacement but now need a good amount of rain to refill it. 

As for butterflies, there have been tons of 'firsts' last week. One was a Painted Lady, which are migratory butterflies which come up from the south. Some years there are many of them and they even cross the English Channel, other years like last year there was only one solitary one. I hope I get to see more this year.

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)

Possibly even more stunning with her (his?) wings closed!

Here's a little video I took of a Jersey Tiger Moth. There have been quite a few of them around in the last few weeks and I've been able to take plenty of photos of them. Several have taken to just sitting on my living room window panes, staring in, for hours on end too!!!

.

Jersey Tiger Moth. I've since cleaned my windows!

Jersey Tiger Moth on my lavender:

Now I'd just like a nice 25mm of rain, but preferably overnight and then the warm weather can come back again..... but not until all the wood has been stacked!

Renewable firewood, Breton style

At about this time every year, the local farmers put down their hunting rifles in favour of their chainsaws and for the next month that is the main sound that fills the countryside. For the first few years that I lived here I just could not understand why the trees looked such a funny shape in winter and were then 'butchered' into an even uglier shape by what I saw as a chainsaw massacre.

It was not until we visited a temporary exhibition on trees at the Ecomusee de Rennes (well worth a visit anyway) that light was shed on a lot of the issues that I hadn't understood. Well I'd realised it was some sort of firewood harvesting, but quite why they did it like that I was totally in the dark about.

So, the history goes something like this. Back in the olden days, the peasant farmers who rented the land from the landowners were allowed to harvest the firewood from the trees which bounded their fields, but only up to so many metres from the ground. The landowner retained the rights over the tops of the trees. This explained why so many trees were nothing but a straight trunk with what looks like a small tree growing out of the top of it! 

It was done on a rotation basis - every few years all the whippy growth would be taken off and this would be bundled into what was called 'fagots' which were used to fire the breadovens, which most farms and rural hamlets would have as their only means of baking bread (not having ovens in their houses). Leaving the larger side branches a few more years would result in firewood for heating their houses. Also as the town of Rennes (the capital of Brittany) grew, the bourgeoisie were demanding more and more firewood to heat their homes, so this also became a means of revenue for the peasant farmers. 

A third reason for pruning the trees in this fashion was because the fields were very small and the trees would cast shade over the crops; cutting the side branches off the trees and keeping them straight like this with just a crown higher up would allow maximum light to penetrate.

Some photos now to illustrate what I am talking about! If you click on any of these photos you will open all of them full size which is a much better way to view them.  

You can see the whippy horizontal growth which
hasn't yet been cut off

A better example, this is a good size
tree and there's several years growth
to remove from the lower half

Even small trees like this
are not exempt from the treatment

So how does this translate into modern day practices? One thing that is very noticeable is that a lot of trees have their crowns cut completely off these days. This isn't killing the tree but it looks very ugly! It seems to be completely random, you'll get a line of trees with one or two cut like this amongst others that still have a crown. I still don't understand this. Another thing is what they do with the whippy growth that was used in the past in the bread ovens - we've all got ovens in our houses these days so they are very rarely used for their traditional use so I can only imagine this kind of wood is sold as kindling. I also feel that the trees are pruned on a much more regular basis than they would have been in the past as often there is not much in the way of any real firewood (i.e. logs) coming off them. So modern practices often involve just cutting down the entire tree for firewood which is very sad. Many of these don't coppice, not when they are mature trees, so when they are cut down that's it.

These trees have already had their side branches
and whippy growth taken off

Bit of a mix of pollarding and coppicing here

Done. I think this photo shows just how barren the
Breton countryside can look by the end of February!

I should point out that I no longer think of this as an ugly blot on the landscape but just accept this as a traditional practice which has been going on for centuries; after several years (and with understanding) I am not unduly bothered by it any more - and anyway, come summer when the leaves are out and the new growth albeit whippy starts growing you don't really notice at all.

However this is what I take exception to. When all the trees on a field margin are cut right down to the ground, they won't grow back again and this seems to be happening around where I live more and more. The view from my veg patch (facing north and east) now has very little in the way of any trees or shrubs to block the cold winds which blow - plus I LIKED seeing the trees on the horizon. But perhaps we have only ourselves to blame; whilst the current 'bourgeoisie' of Rennes are probably more reliant on CH these days, it's us lot out in the countryside demanding more and more firewood to keep us warm (and I bet, we want to be a darn site warmer than the folks of days gone by). On the other hand, who can blame us as it's by far the cheapest way to heat our houses and is in fact encouraged by our government who give us grants to install wood burners!

An entire line of trees on a field margin destroyed -
quite why one tree remains is a mystery. Perhaps they
haven't got to chopping that one down yet.

On our land we have the remains of an old field margin with an ancient oak which bears the scars of having had its side branches cut off over the decades (or possibly even centuries), but in recent decades since being part of an enclosed garden it now bears what looks like one tree growing out of the top of it and another growing off to the side! It has a huge girth and I keep meaning to get some string and measure it so I can try to figure out how old it must be. What it must have seen in the course of its lifetime!

Our tree - I'll try to take one when
there is no vegetation as it will show better