Hacking bracken and looking to the future

Dorset in January… Well, Dorset in January if you happen to live in the middle of a wood where the bracken and fern are rampant and where the deer decimate anything which does not have vicious thorns to protect itself. Believe it or not but there is a rather fine hamamelis tree buried under that lot.

But see what a few hours hard graft will do…. (If you look carefully you can just see the hamamelis in the background  taking its first breath of fresh air in some months.)

Or how about this pathway up behind the back of the house?

Here are Sue (owner of house, camera woman,  gluten-free beer expert and author of Sue’s coeliac diary) – and I – trying to reveal the hedge so that we (well, Sue…) can ‘lay’ it.

Different hedge which is not, I am told, quite ready for laying yet – but which we none the less we submitted to a trimming exercise….

And just one more proof of our hard work – and then I will show you what it will look like in a few weeks time….

Before:

…and after:

And very soon this little bank will look like this:

And that bank up behind the hamamelis will look like this:

And a little later still, the woods will all be covered in these:

Worth every aching muscle….

I was going to go on to tell you what plans I had formulated for the future of our various awards, websites and books while I was hacking the bracken but, to be honest, all I was thinking about most of the time was the delicious gluten free Parkin that Sue had baked – and when I was next going to be allowed a bit of it.

However, thought was stimulated and indeed discussions have been had, so all will be revealed very soon….