All the trees are growing!

My parents are visiting, and yesterday we took a walk in Sweep Wood to see how it's getting on after our two winters coppicing there. And it's looking great!

All the trees we cut last winter are growing again now, here's Sweet Chestnut, Hornbeam and Alder:

The year-old trees are doing well too, here's some Ash back in leaf:

And of course, until the trees grow back to close the canopy, everything on the ground is going crazy:

Compare this to a similar bit of the wood a few years ago:

Quite a difference, eh?

Here's another one from a few years ago:

but this area doesn't look so different yet for ground flora, as we only just cut it - it'll need another year's growth to change visibly.

The bluebells have just started to pass their peak in this part of the wood now, so here's a few photos, as there may not be many more.

The ride between Sweep Wood and Chestnut Coppice is looking pretty good too:

and not far from there is some Hawthorn in bloom - a bit later than the ones you might have seen in hedgerows, as it's shaded to some extent. But once again, there's a coppicing benefit here, as this is a tree that didn't flower at all until we cut along that ride:

One final exciting thing we saw, which bodes well for the summer, was hundreds of caterpillars on our crab apple tree. I'm no good at identifying them, so any help appreciated! They did an amazing job of looking like twigs:

Though when they do it on the edge of a leaf it's probably a bit less effective as camouflage:

Anyway, that's all for now. We walked some of the High Weald Landscape Trail today, so there'll be pics from that in due course...

Mike

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An adventure in the woods

Yesterday was a bit of an adventure in the woods, more for our cockatiels Pete and Tom than for us (though we had a problem at the end of the day...). For the first time since we've owned the wood we took our birds up there to see how they coped with it. The goal is to see if we could take them when we camp, as we can't leave them at home on their own for more than one night, unless someone checks on them.
They had to stay in their travel cage of course - at home they're free to fly around. They were pretty calm though, and settled in after a few minutes.
though there was plenty for them to keep an eye on up in the trees...
They chatted a bit with a blackbird who came by:
and we discovered what happens to the hundreds of caterpillars that fall out of the oak trees every day...
There were also plenty of pheasants around, I got a few photos of these two scrapping:
I had a walk around to see how things were growing. The "wildlife corridor" we coppiced in 2008/9 is thickening out nicely at a low level:
You can't see it in those pictures, but the edges are becoming dense with plants and flowers that were not present two years ago, so that's working out well. We expect to come along here and cut the regrowth again in winter 2011/2012, after three years growth.

Out in the wayleave there's loads of blossom on the brambles now:
which is good news for butterflies now, and for us when we eat some of the blackberries in a few months...

I also saw this yellow iris of some sort growing near the bottom of the wayleave:
So what was our bit of the adventure then? Well, when we got ready to come home, the clutch broke in the land rover! Fortunately our friend Jenny gave Tracy and the birds a lift home, and I managed to start the landy with it already in gear and drive down to the road to be rescued:
It's now waiting at the garage to be fixed over the next week....

Mike

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Making a charcoal kiln from an oil drum

Last night we started on making one of our charcoal kilns. I'm going to try two designs, the first is a basic one, cutting the top off the barrel and making a ledge for it to sit in. The base of the barrel has holes in it to let the air in while it is supported on bricks, then the bricks are removed and it can be sealed around the base to exclude the air once the charcoal is done. I'll do some photos when we use it...

First though, we had to rescue a caterpillar that had taken up residence:

Then I set about cutting the top off, by drilling some holes to get started and then going in with a pair of tin snips:
I still need to make some extra holes in the bottom, but first I had to make a fire in it to burn out any oil residues. This was a bit nasty, so we did it at the end of the evening, to try and avoid the smoke upsetting anyone...
More on this:
finishing making the kiln
the results

Mike

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