Darling, you really shouldn't have!!!!!!!!

 

Can you hear that creaky cracking sound, and that slight but persistent whine?  Don't worry, it's not another earthquake or tornado approaching, it's the sound that results from one of my birthday presents. 

My husband decided that, as a low cost alternative to a retail visit to Chester, I could have a teensy boskey-copse-y extention of the domestic grinds beyond the orchard and into the paddock. 

 

This 'gift' includes somewhere close to 300 hedging hawthorns plus a couple of dozen other shrubby things like laurel, holly, willow and dogwood and about ½dozen proper trees.  I've spent a morning realigning the electric fencing which is keeping the horses off until our fence bloke arrives to shift it outwards from its current position to beyond the 'new' area, and marking out where the fence is to be put, and setting a marking line for the hedge.  That was the good bit even tho I got a little shock from the fencing and my hair now looks like a more frizzled and sticking out version of Lisa Simpson's style. 

 

4 hours later my back is a creaking misery, my arms bloodily scarified by thorns and my nail varnish utterly ruined.    Still, 12 hedgeplants down and only 288 to go. 

 

Do you fancy a day out saving the world and planting trees?  Be my guest!