Photos: Back to the Woods

Has it really been eleven months since I posted the first batch of photos from this set? Yikes! Well, having sorted through them at last, it's finally time to take a quick tour through the wooded spot at the back of my parent's place. Hooray!



Picking up pretty much where I left off last time is a more zoomed-out pic of the apple tree the blossoms were on. Despite being, I'd imagine, more than thirty years old at this point this still produces quite a decent crop of fruit every year. If I'd thought of pulling out a bit further, you might also be able to see the newer tree they planted behind this one, which still only manages a handful of apples, though it's lucky to still even be in one piece, but more on that later.





Moving beyond the apple trees, to the right we have a hawthorn tree, also in bloom. Later in the year these produce red berries called haws, which are edible, but not particularly appetizing.



Down a bit further; couldn't tell you what kind of tree this is, but it's been firmly taken over by ivy, which I thought looked kind of cool.



Looking far less cool is this huge heap of branches piled up between the trees.

Where did they come from? Well, back in late 2010 my parents got this guy in to cut back the trees a bit. Being the family's closest answer to Pulp Fiction's Mr. Wolf, I got tasked with cleaning up the area of mass destruction he left in his wake. In early 2011 you could barley walk through this place with the huge freaking chucks of trees strewn everywhere, including on top of the small apple tree, which he'd managed to drop a huge log on, almost snapping it in two.

So, starting from the area around the apple trees over the next couple of months of my free time, I worked my way through this sea of branches, rendering them down into (a) firewood,...



(b) huge freaking logs, which are still in this exact spot btw, and



(c) this huge pile of smaller branches. Being too piddling to use for firewood, and too awkward to move, all I could do was leave them there for the time being. When they still hadn't been shifted more than a year later, there was clearly only one solution...



JILIK used FIRE. It was super effective.



Moving beyond branch mountain, to the left is a small pear tree that hadn't produced fruit since probably the 90's, and actually got chopped down a couple of weeks ago to allow for some drainage works to be carried out next to where it was.



Thankfully we do have another one further up, that also hasn't produced a single pear in years. Can't say I miss all that pear crumble, though I wouldn't mind trying my hand at another pie or two.





Moving back towards the bottom of the wood, we have some more hawthorn blossoms (Heh. Just noticed the couple of bugs hanging out in the second one)...



...and some new branches starting to grow, which I guess will compensate for the back street tree surgery, in time.



This would be a much nicer shot if a lot of the leaves didn't look so wilted. :D



Reaching the bottom of wood, we have a couple of coniferous trees on the left, a sea of stones from some old farm buildings, and in the middle of those, probably the biggest tree of the lot...



...which also has it's fair share of ivy growing on it...



...as well as some gnarly growths near it's trunk.



Looking up from under the tree.



And below (well, almost). With the ivy weaving through them and the sun shining, I think these have a kind of decorative quality to them.



I guess it's best there are no neighbours to weigh in on that for quite a distance though. :D

(Now, where did I leave that saw? I imagine I'll have a recently-felled pear tree to take care of pretty soon.)