Tiptoe Through the…

For the last couple of years we have been planting tulip bulbs in half of the orchard:

They are beginning to erupt.

Phew…

After waiting so long the year has taken off with with a whoosh.

Although there are a lot more hours in the day there seems to be more things to do than will fit into them.

So there has not been much time for musings here.

Fortunately a lot of beautiful things seem to happen without us – here are some of them:

Once Bitten, Twice As High

Two years ago we planted over a hundred new trees on the edge of our meadow

We bought them as plugs from The Woodland Trust and dutifully used the canes and plastic tubes that came as part of the packs.

There has been much debate recently about these plastic tubes. Keith Powell of Stump up for Trees

has an interesting piece in a recent edition of The Land

about he he recently planted 120,00 trees in Wales without them.

We only see the very occasional rabbit and the tubes did seem to be inhibiting leaf growth as well as providing an ideal micro-climate for grass growth.

So last Autumn we removed the tubes…

…and then one morning recently we found rabbits had nipped off fifteen of the young trees

Now removed, we will keep these deformed stumps which should grow into hedging material.

Although we are close to the end of bare root reason out local Nursery

was able to supply us with some well grown field maple whips

They went in today

and being taller than the damaged stock

are worthy of a celebratory roll in the grass