Sunshine between the showers

Well it did rain most of the day, but the sun came out in the evening, and a quick check on the radar image on the Met Office website confirmed that there was likely to be a couple of hours before the next shower, so we jumped in the car and nipped up to the wood.

First thing we saw was a medium-sized oak branch had come down in the wind:

Also, in Sweep Wood, we had a slow wander along the path my Dad had marked out, and saw some interesting trees. There were several naturally regenerating chestnut and hazel, and also a couple of oaks, which was nice to see, though it made us want to fell the coppice there to give the oak a better chance! What was interesting was finding a young hawthorn and what I'm pretty sure was a beech - I'm only doubting my judgement because there are no large beech trees in sight, so I've no idea how a seed got there.

Anyway, we'll keep an eye on them - the beech was up to about 8 feet, racing for the light as it's overshadowed by the chestnut - the beech is known as a shade-tolerant tree. If it keeps growing like this I'm sure it will produce some lovely timber in about 100 years, and along the way plenty of nuts for animals to eat and also some offspring!

In an earlier post I included a picture of some chestnut coppice cut last winter in another wood, here it is again:
I commented that ours is less well stocked, here's an example from one bit:
and here's part that's a bit better:
There's also a notable difference between the stools, such as this poor one:
and this pollard that's growing like crazy:
I guess when we come to do the layering we'll use the stronger stools to create the "cloned" new trees.

Mike