Cutting an overgrown Holly hedge, and making some new place mats

For the last few Saturdays we've been working where Sweep Wood borders a neighbour's garden. There are border trees there which probably used to be a hedge at some point in the past, but are very overgrown now. Our neighbour would like a view from their house across the wood, we need to cut the trees at some point anyway, and right now their garden is just empty soil as it's being redone. So we've taken the opportunity for fell some trees into the garden, rather than into the regrowing coppice from our work there in 2009/10.

Here's a pic from a week ago, when we'd cleared a gap and started to move brash back over the fence to make a dead hedge:

We've had lots of brash to cut up, as Holly always seems to be very bushy!

There's some fairly chunky stems in there:

And we're getting plenty of nice heavy logs out of them!

At the end of last Saturday we'd created a view like this:

Today we went to carry on with the trees at the left...

Again, plenty of decent Holly logs in there, which will be great in a year or two for keeping the fire in overnight - Holly is very dense and so burns slowly.

If you were wondering why I'd felled the one above so high, it's because it had ancient barbed wire embedded in it, and I didn't want to blunt the chain on my chainsaw by hitting it!

There's now a decent gap in the overgrown hedge there:

Though at either end are a few trees we'd still like to deal with before Spring arrives:

Here's the pile of logs we have to move at some point - I already did one trailer load when it was snowing a few weeks ago.

One last thing - what do you think Tracy is carrying here?

Answer - our new set of placemats!

They're slices cut from a Holly tree that had some kind of fungal infection. We found this once before, in a Sycamore, and the mats we made are still in use at home. Just in the time it took to get home, the Holly had already changed colour, taking on a more greenish hue:

Tomorrow we'll coat them with PVA glue to stop them drying too fast and splitting, and then store them in the shed for a year or so. Then they'll be ready to bring indoors and use!

Mike