23 May Felled trees
After the long winter, the garden is suddenly rushing into leaf and blossom. Sadly, the four great London Plane trees that were considered responsible for subsidence at the end of our building have now been felled and the stump grinding has been completed. The massive trunks are lying in all directions awaiting the attention of our good friend, Patrick Turk of Forest2Furniture, who will mill them on site, stack the planks to dry and eventually turn them into his amazing furniture. The smaller branches were put through a chipping machine and we have spread the resulting wood chips over our long terrace in the hope of suppressing weeds. Around the same time, we realised that a large horse chestnut – our only pink-flowering chestnut – was thoroughly rotten and dangerous, so it had to come down as well. Fortunately, there are numerous shoots growing from the spreading roots and we could soon have a small forest of chestnut trees if we chose. We will probably select one of the tallest and strongest and cut the others away to give it space to flourish. So perhaps one day we shall have pink candles again in May.
