Recycling trees
I can’t tell you how great it is to live in a hippy region. I went up to town yesterday in my Ugg slippers. It was an accident, I assure you. But no one noticed.
We don’t go in for sartorial elegance around here.
In fact if you aren’t in your agicultural blue overalls, then very grubby clothes never causes much anxiety. Or notice. But it was embarrassing as I realised, too late, that I hadn’t changed my shoes.
I blame the obssessive nature of the current job. Chipping sticks. I think I am inhaling too much fine dust. It’s addling my brain.
At the moment I am the king of the castle. The only one living on the mountain. Jean Daniel is away watching rugby in Wales and London. So he has left me in charge of cat and horses for a week. Artur is treating it like The Best Holiday Ever. He gets a warm house, a roaring fire, affection, attention and conversational chats.
And I decided to do some clearing up around Jean Daniel’s farm while he was away.
He is very good at cutting down ailing trees and dead branches. But like a lot of people, he doesn’t clean up after himself. The branches just lie there to moulder.
In the old days (ie last year) he would probably have lit a large bonfire and reduced the whole thing to ash after he took the large bits for firewood.
But we don’t do that anymore. Fires are banned. One is supposed to take all the green matter to the tip. Or if you have a neighbour like me, to the chipper to reduce everything to a brilliant garden mulch.
And how spooky is it that I am loathe to clean up after myself in the kitchen, but give me a tree that’s cut down and I’m in there with the loppers, keen to clean up every last branch?
Well, it’s not spooky. I’m always desperate for mulch.
So it has taken a day but I have cleared up most of the giant chestnut. And removed all the cherry branches that were sitting in a massive heap on Jean Daniel’s lawn.
My blades on the chipper are sharp, so it has been a joy to work the machine.
And the destination for all the lovely mulch? The terrace bank above the potting shed.
Next blog I get to show you all the results of my toil. I didn’t want to bore you with endless shots of brown. But I hope you enjoy the clever uses of a station wagon on a farm.