Ready to join the B-Society

Having found it really difficult to get motivated this morning I mooched about the house doing some general tidying. Come the afternoon, the sun was out, the temperature was into double figures and I busied myself cleaning out the alpacas and getting their hay. There was no way I wanted to go back inside so I set to finishing cleaning up the branches I’d cut from the mulberry trees. They’re all done now and as I’ve bought the extension lead for the chain saw I can now cut out the remaining branches as the base of the trees are again clear.

While I tidied up below, Snowy decided to inspect the tree from above

After that I cleaned up the trunks of the large poplar trees. I’d started on this last year using loppers. It took me the best part of a morning to clear one tree, as it was so difficult getting the blade of the loppers around the branches, which are almost parallel to the trunk. This year I used the serpe and it was like grease lightning. Fifteen minutes later and the tree was clear and better still, because the serpe is used with one hand only, the other hand can hold the branch so tidying up the branches was quicker as well. Using the loppers was a two handed job so the branches fell to the ground and had to be picked up separately.

Clearing up some of the dead wood that had fallen I found this wonderful fungi which I think is ‘Tripe fungus’.

By now the sun had well and truly set but it was only just getting dark so I tried out the serpe on preparing the new bamboo canes. Yes it was far easier with that than the knife I used last year – I am becoming a fan of my serpe.

Finally it was too dark to see but while I was out I was rewarded with my first sighting of a bat this year. If it had stayed light I would have quite happily worked on and it reminded me of this article I’d read. I think I’m definitely a B-person. Roll on summer and the long, long evenings.