Some say they look scruffy but I have a lot of time for grey willows. When I initially came up with this tree planting project it was with these trees on my mind. Although the blackthorn flowers first in the hedgerow, you cannot mistake the…
Category: For the trees
Everything environmental
Week 8
I almost forgot to mark our eighth week of planting. We were still putting oaks in, and I made slow progress as we had a lot of rain. Almost all the trees that were gifted to us by the Tree Council of Ireland had been…
Did ye heel-in?
It is true that you learn something new every day. Today I learned the term heel-in. It’s just as well too. On the Calendar Road, we have been overwhelmed by the kind gesture from the Tree Council of Ireland who have donated trees to our…
Week 7 – oaks, everywhere?!
May 2nd to May 7th went by in a flash. I was still planting the remaining birch into early May and delighted to start back on the oak trees. It was a very cold start to May which has helped keep the oaks dormant. I…
Week 6
I managed to get a good bit of work done over the bank holiday weekend. The sun was shinning and the clement weather made the job of planting so much easier. The weather broke after the weekend so there’s a pause on at the moment.…
A small milestone
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree~ And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven… Robert Frost Thanks to the good weather I managed to plant 46 birch trees this weekend. This evening I decided to put a few up in…
When the cuckoo calls
The cuckoo has returned to our part of the world, and his call is a portent of spring—he arrived with the midges, and the last few days the air has been thick with the little biters. We don’t often get many of them even though…
The Tree Project gets a boost!
To spill passed angelica and bird’s-foot trefoil, down to the meadowsweet of the long acre. Extract from Scarecrows written by Sinéad McClure Below, Deacon and I are enjoying the late Autumn in what we call The Long Acre. This is the strip of land where…
Week 3: 3rd – 9th April
This week’s tree is a Magnolia (Okay not exactly native, but I made an exception here) When we first moved to the Calendar Road all I wanted was a magnolia tree/shrub. It took a while to find one and it grew much slower than other…