Arboreal-ism

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The view down the garden this afternoon, post-major-tree-pruning activities. I've just finished the periodic radical haircut on the old willows [back, centre]: they'll never be much more than their rather stunted selves, due to their position and the total lack of proper soil in our garden, but I still need two sections of a ladder to work on the bigger of the two, and their flexibility makes working up there a pretty wobbly experience: a bit like working up some of the more iffy telegraph poles when I was with BT. Jane's also given the heavily pollarded silver birch - slightly left of centre in the midground of the picture - a good top out; and the out of control [as usual] lilac just in front of the willows, has had a good scalping from the two of us.

All in all, we've reclaimed quite a bit of the view out towards Ynys Môn, which can't be at all bad, and in doing so, we've taken out significant amounts of dead wood and spindly growth from the plants concerned. One thing's for absolute certain: both will probably have chucked out significant new growth by Christmas, given the mild autumn we're currently experiencing, and the grass continues to grow apace, even though we're entering November. All in all, not a bad day, even though the volume of cuttings to deal with is extraordinary; although, to be fair, a lot of it will stay in piles and be allowed to act as wildlife habitat for the winter, as is our usual practice.

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