Saturday 28th April 2018

When we moved the shed to the back patio to prepare for the extension work we found a hedgehog nesting underneath and Joanne carefully moved him. We had not seem him since (or before) but this weekend we saw him in the garden several times. Maybe he has just wandered back in the garden, or maybe he is just more confident but no wonder the cat is skittish and shooting in and out of the cat flap!

I was off to Mexico on Sunday and we had booked the cinema for Saturday afternoon so I went to Rais for a few hours in the morning. it was damp and dull but dry baring a bit of light drizzle once or twice, a big contrast to last week. The bluebells are out in force over the other side of the stream, where the piles of plastic tree protectors were, .

and there was some interesting fungi, which Google suggests is a Jews ear fungus on what I think is an Elder tree.












Over by the Hive the shed has been living up to it's name as the wasps has started a nest in one of the window shutters, it looked abandoned though, with a dead wasp nearby so I quickly removed it. The oak saplings are all looking a bit odd, last week they were all unfurling leaves but this week every single one looks a bit wilted and the leaves have a red tinge. Hopefully this is normal (although the mature tress do not look like this) and not a disease so they will need to be monitored.

I dug up pretty much all of the stumps in the new clearing, just one huge one to go. The couple of really difficult big ones, on the stream banks or mixed in the tress were weedkillered. Two of the piles of stumps got moved to the fire site, another half dozen trips and this section will be done. While I was applying the weed killer to one of the stumps I noticed a big burrow of some kind in the stream bank. there were no obvious tracks, and it is a wet place, but it looked fairly recent and maintained so maybe it is occupied.

I've noticed that although the bracken is sprouting around the hive area there is not a single stem coming up in the wayleave! Maybe we finally have beaten it, or maybe the grass is established enough to keep it under. I'm sure a few will pop up later but at the moment it looks great

Sunday 22nd April 2018

It was the hottest week of the year, and the hottest April for 70 years, and I'm in Brazil in the Autumn where it was cloudy and damp, typical!

A dry hot week has made a huge difference at Rais, Spring is in full stream, the Bluebells are coming out all over the wood,

and the primroses are still in full bloom.

The trees are unfurling their leaves,

green is sprouting everywhere and excitingly the oak saplings are starting to leaf.

The strange buzzing by the green man tree had stopped though, so hopefully no wasps nests lurking!

Helen and I spent the day on Sunday to try and clear the pile of cut rohdies we left last week. Ant was there too, still digging stumps up by the top shed.
It was sunny and much hotter than the forecast had suggested but we moved everything to the fire that we needed to and dug up at least half of the stumps in the new clearing.

More digging next week and some trips to the fire will complete the clearance. I still can't believe how much space was hidden behind those rohdies. It was a hot day and the days objective was met so we called it a day about 3

Saturday 14th April 2018

Spring has definitely arrived. Saturday was warm and sunny, the leaves of the trees are unfurling and green is starting to return, the birds are very vocal and the insects and butterflies were out in force, unfortunately so was the first bracken!

There were some very odd noises coming from near the green man tree, it sounded like a bee hive but although there were quite a lot of flies around I could not see where it was coming from, something to monitor

I'm not sure if there is just less cover or really there are mot squirrels around, but after not seeing any until very recently now I am seeing them every week. I saw at least 3 this time around the Yardarm

I had been up after work on Wednesday and moved all the chopped rohdie from the gully behind the yardarm to the fire site so this morning, after feeding the birds, I carried on finishing the clearing of the top section by the cars. It turned out to be a much bigger job than I expected.





I was only there for five hours as I had work travel on Sunday to prepare for but in that time I only managed to clear the rohides that were left from Easter into a huge pile to be split small enough to get to the fire and dig up a good number of stumps. But all the chopping is now done and I can spend some time going back for the stumps over the next couple of months. What a difference to that section in a  couple of weeks though, it's difficult to believe so much land was hidden behind the bushes

Saturday 7th April 2018

The clocks going forwards, and the corresponding lighter evenings, means it's feasible to go to Rais for an hour after work and I wanted a big final push this week to cut back some of the lower regrowth where nothing is likely to be nesting. So after work on Thursday I went up and and cut back along the stream bank by the shower. I made good progress but found, once again, that the shower platform is really slippery - ouch

Saturday looked the best day, weather wise, for the weekend and Helen came up to help as well. What a difference a week makes, Spring has definitely arrived. The leaves are unfurling, the birds were singing, the primroses are all now flowering and it was warm and dry. t-shirt weather for working.

After feeding the birds and a wander round we started to cut back the last section for now, the gully behind the yardarm. I had thought it was a fairly small job, and hour at most for two of use but there was a lot more than I thought, and an
awful lot of brambles

which, added to quite difficult footing meant it was lunchtime and we were both covered in bramble scratches before we got it all chopped. Now we just had to drag it all to the fire!
We discovered a well established and very rambling Rose and various small trees in the process

I had a revelation during lunch and to save some effort we had a fire in the camp, probably my most successful ever fire! and burned two decent piles. We were a bit tight on time so rather than burn we dragged the rest to a place we can get it on a wheelbarrow easily to transport to the main fire site. A hard but rewarding day.

Easter 2018 - 1st April

For the Easter bank holiday weekend, the plan was to spend a couple of days at Rais and stay over one of them, if the weather cooperated.

Friday was a total washout, solid rain all day so we all stayed home!

The forecast for Monday was similar, wet all day, but Flee and Tracey could only stay Sunday night so to get some work done I went up for a few hours on Saturday. It was just me and I fed the birds, reorganised the log store to get the green wood in a distinct pile, and chopped some rohdies near the car park. It was dry, surprisingly dry underfoot considering the rain the day before, but still cold and although the trees are budding the leaves are not starting to come on yet and the only sign of new life really is the primroses which are flowering now and the bluebells leaves coming through in loads of places.

Spring has definitely not arrived! I did see that the doves are well established in the owl box and there seem to be a lot of squirrels around all of a sudden, maybe there is just less cover for them so I can see them more easily.

I stopped for lunch about 2 and made good use of my flask and it's cosy!

When I arrived I looked at the hard standing parking and wondered if Ant would be coming today. As I didn't know I parked on the bank as usual which was fine until I tried to leave, then I got properly stuck. The wheels had sunk into dip in the ground and the car was going nowhere! As Ant had of course not turned up I eventually had to get Helen to come from home and pull me out with the z4!!

On Sunday we were all planing to be there so I tried a different parking spot, in the hope of not getting stuck! I arrived about 10, Ant shortly after that and Flee and Tracey shortly after him. Ant had sent Tracey an Aprils fools text saying the pylon had fallen down! and he didn't know what to do, which she didn't read until she was in the yardarm (obviously having walked past the still standing Rais) and she still fell for it!

After a cuppa Ant carried on digging stumps by the top shed with his newly welded fork (don't ask!), and Tracey and I cleared rohdies by the car park while Flee managed the fire. We made good progress, nearly all the rohdie is cleared to the eastern boundary and the stream is cleared too.

Ant left about 5 and the rest of us stayed for Tracey's chilli and homemade bread, which was lovely as usual, and we had a nice chilled (in the sense we were both relaxed and a bit cold!) evening round the fire pit. The rain started about 10pm and was not forecast to stop until Tuesday! so we went to bed about 11.

I slept pretty well despite the rain and got up about 9.30, The rain was still coming down so there was no real prospect of doing any work., We had breakfast, and a couple of cups of tea while watching the birds, the woodpeckers were out and the usual crowd on the feeders were busy and joined by a blackbird and (I think) a chaffinch with a gammy leg. A Great Tit was starting to show interest in the nest box nearest the tool boxes but he is a really tight fit to get through the hole! he tried to enlarge it a bit but the metal plate caused him some problem! After breakfast we packed up (and I nearly went flying!) and left about midday. I got stuck again leaving, it's definitely time to get some hard standing down and that's going to be my next project after the rohdie chopping stops for the season, which is going to be very soon.