Does anyone know anything about gardening?

I've only got bramble and ivy, thanks fuck, so have become intimately familiar with either. The bramble have a reddish tinge to them, are more brittle and usually converge on a gnarly, tuber type mass. The ivy has less of a taper and pulls like a cable. Which made it all the more exciting when I found and actual cable and went at it with the fork.

Went for a late dim sum and fuelled by XLB and har gau I came back and pulled these two stumps up. Leaving the old cedar stump and making a kinda bug hotel out of it. Want to lay some paving of gravel so that I can put some seating here as it gets the sun all day.

Still need to get rid of these bloody rocks too!!

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Good effort. Digging out stumps is bloody hard graft.

Good to see appearances being kept up with Redwings and Selvedge gardening attire :-)

Any plans for that collection of roof tiles?

Yeah my gardening gear - redwings, Albam jeans, Nigel Cabourn fisherman’s jumper and MHL smock 😂 quickly dispensed with them and went topless

Theres an absolute ton of them - they were all hidden behind the hedge. We’re doing work on the house next year so in case they’re of any use for that I’ve stacked most of them neatly. If not I’ll have to try and get rid of them

Also planted an inordinate number of bulbs

https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Professional-Solid-Forged-Fencing-Bar---1-8m/p/190344

We used one of these. Makes light work of digging roots out.

Mattocks are pretty much de rigeur for that sort of thing too.

Mattocks: vital user information.

Only buy fibreglass handled ones, sharpen with angle grinder, hand to largest labourer, stand well clear.

If you eliminate all the peril, where's the fun?

I look at it as a fine balance, I add significantly to the peril by sharpening, then balance said peril by making it someone else's.

Defo putting yourself on the right side of that particular scale...

I’ve so far failed to break the Roughneck mattock I’ve had for about 5yrs. By contrast I’ve bent/broken 2x Verve(b&q) ones in a single job.
Sharpen at a bit of a blunt angle- much better to send chunks flying off instead of making it like a knife edge and continually get it stuck.
The axe side of the head on the roughneck is an acceptable log splitting maul as well.

I tend to use the everlasting Screwfix ones, if you break one within 3 years they replace it, ad infinitum.

I have you down as a prime suspect for wanton woodland wankery. You say you have retired, but I know you have been working nearby, allegedly on glittering things. However, I think you have been needing your chainsaw fix, it's like opioids. Deny this!

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That looks like it was a fun morning!

^ & ^^ I thought it wasn't the done thing to chop trees during nesting season? Looks like a lovely bluebell wood being cleared. Perhaps there's a good reason for it but it is pretty sad looking space from that picture.

Yep, a little gentle chestnut coppicing on a 15 year rotation. Rough as fuck to get to, which is why you don't buy pickups 2nd hand from forestry companies, 2 years and 15,000 miles and they're fucked!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuvivgkIkV8/?igshid=1ufolmxedlkyl

Nothing like a forestry run Ukrainian style!

Coppice is a crop, it gets harvested and regrows.
As I understood it over the course of my career it’s common to observe the tree/area for a few days to see if anything is indeed nesting. In London it’s not uncommon for arborists to move nests to adjacent trees before felling starts.

But yeah, banging a load of trees in a bluebell wood might look extreme if you don’t know all the details...

Mid-May is very late for coppicing.
If the woodland has ever received any public funding, one would have hoped there was a fallow period from the end of March through to June to allow the next generation of wild woodland inhabitants to produce the next generation.

Actually cut in late March/early April, just a nice little wind-up for @edmundro.

There's about 500 acres of woodland, privately owned and with no public footpaths. Therefore, with the only intrusive humans being myself and a few others, it is full of wildlife. Sadly, private woodland tends to be more of a wildlife haven than so-called nature reserves which have heavy footfall and little management.

Will it be turned into paling?

By the size of most of it, post and rail is more likely.

So I re-arranged the furniture so it would fit under the cover we bought and then came the torrential rain and wind, and it seemed to deal with it really well.

Brand is Bosmere and it’s a 6000 weight model.

Any advice for keeping rain off balcony boxes and wiping out plants?

Are you able to say where it is? Not to encourage sneaking in, but it looks cool and presumably there’s some public right of way around there and I’m also Sussex based