Goodbye to green.

It's midday on Thursday, 26^th May. I've just come in from an hour's hard work in the garden. I'm soaked with sweat and drizzle and yet the minute I start to type this up at the dining table the sun shows itself and the garden is basked in light. The dark clouds are rapidly being blown across the sky, uncovering those fluffy cotton-wool beauties whose arrival brightens up any sky. I love looking at them from above when in a plane. The sun shines brightly on them and they look like little worlds of candyfloss.

Do you remember that just a few short months ago we spent a weekend trimming back the conifer hedge we have directly outside the French windows which give us untold privacy on our deck? We have always smiled at the fat sparrow who clings to the tallest stem which was out of the reach of our loppers. He used to sway precariously from side to side on this whip of green before whizzing off to the nest in next doors' guttering. Here he is in, for him, happier days.

You'll also remember the incident with Milo, the new neighbours' dog and our hens then? Our chickens now take one look at the dog in his garden and scamper off up the ramp to the safety of their hen house where they will perch for hours, missing out on the freedom of the run and totally unaware that Milo, having yapped and raced around the lawn for several minutes has now happily trotted back indoors and is no threat to them. We've all agreed that a fence is in order and as the neighbours also expressed an interest in the conifers being removed so their planned extension would not butt up against them that is what I've been labouring away at through the rain.

Luckily there were no nests in the trees so it was all systems go on lopping down the side branches to make it easier for Luke to cut the main trunks. We hope to use the stumps to aid removal . Once we've loosened the soil around the knot of roots we'll rock the stumps to free them from the ground. That's the plan; let's see how far we stray from that idea!

Now of course, whilst there is plenty of daylight showing through the emaciated trunks it has also opened up the view for our neighbours and given us more of an idea what the garden will eventually look like with a fence running along it's length. I think we'd all have liked to have just had shrubs to keep the natural look but the neighbours, lovely as they are, have found out what we knew all along – that dogs and chickens do not live happily alongside one another once dogs have found how much fun it is to chase chicks.

So a barrier will be going up and our view will change dramatically. Now I've chopped back the thick of the branches I am starting to get excited at the changing shape of the garden. With the conifers gone it will be more uniform and also provide us with a perfect place to grow herbs. It's the place to grow them, just by the house so that you literally step out, tweak the herb you need and step back in again. This is especially useful in the winter months when a long walk up the sodden garden in the rain to grab a pinch of herbs is a chore. I'm not going to rush anything though – we will wait and see what the fence looks like, how we feel about the rest of the garden once the dynamics have changed and besides, by the time the arduous work of digging great holes, sinking in fence posts, nailing or screwing in lengths of wood and painting the whole thing we may be fed up of anything to do with the garden (I don't really believe that). For now, I am off to admire my handiwork which now consists of two enormous piles of unruly branches and three punk conifers with nothing but Mohawks left of their lushness.

 

 

The tree tops are all that's left. Below, one pile of branches on the deck, getting as high as five feet whilst the overspill ends up on the garden.