All Done In A Good Cause

The destruction went on along the footpath, the Council sent in contractors with machinery.

This machine was sent into the part of the woodland we called 'The Primrose Wood' where Spring brought masses of Primroses throughout.

Rough stone was laid onto the torn surface.

This was laid all the way along up to the farm.

A couple of sleepers were laid over the stream and a fence put up alongside. The fence? To stop people from falling over the edge where the stream cut through down into the wood.

All this was done to make the walk safe and to tidy it up! This is absolutely true, there are people working on our Councils who believe the countryside is intrinsically unsafe and untidy for people. Therefore if there is money to waste, I mean available, then it should be put to good use in this way.

The track was then finished off with a layer of what is called dust and compacted down. Then they erected the fence all the way along. The owner of the farm was only too happy to allow them to do this. He has saved himself hundreds of pounds in fencing which suits him very well.

The legacy can be seen here.

Trees have been torn up.

The width of this small area of woodland has been devastated.

No Primroses have survived this. Horses now come into the area and have chopped the ground about until nothing exists.

The trees to the right are three Limes (Tilia × europaea) which were known locally as the Three Witches. Thankfully they have not been touched, but the area underneath them used to grow Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum) or Ransoms. But no more, thankfully we have a wonderful stock in the garden that can be picked easily.

The whole exercise was done with good intension no doubt. But also done in complete ignorance. The Council waller was a nice enough chap to talk to, partly because we did stir things up and he was handling us with kid gloves. But it's this kind of ignorance that is destroying the planet, little by little a section at a time.

He believes he was following the area that the original track used to run, which was true. But it had fallen out of use as a trackway for around 80 years. The area had formed it's own environment with the gradual claiming back by nature. But he could not see this argument.

Anyway we did what we could, but this area was out of our control. We can only look on the positive side. The new area that has been laid with stone is at least from a local quarry. The stone is Pembrokeshire Carbonaceous limestone. Within a few years plants that love an alkaline environment will dominate this area. It will be interesting to see what comes along over the years.

Fuming

We don't take holidays as such, basically living here at our home 365 days of the year. why go elsewhere when you love a place so much. But when the family come to visit, we take days off to go out to places in the locality.

One of the days we were missing for the day and when we found the damage done to the woodland, you would think a teenager was put in charge of the chainsaw.

But no, it was a contractor working for the Pembrokeshire County Council. Their remit was to make sure the footpath was kept open. Now we have 159 yards (145 metres) of footpath running through the bottom of our land, and we make sure that the footpath is always passable, nothing intrudes into the footpath space.

So when you find trees hacked back and chopped for no reason you want answers.

  This laurel was slashed for no reason, the branch grew away from the footpath.

This hazel was cut down yet grew 4 feet from the path and the branch did not grow toward the footpath.

Trees 10 feet (3.4 metres) away from the path were cut back, yet others only 2 feet (60 cm) away were left. The mature Beech was even cut. A branch 9feet (2.74 metres) above the path and the end of the branch the same distance away was cut off. Nothing made sense.

The contractor was caught the next day and gave a feeble sorry.

Asking a response from the Council is like holding onto a wet eel. Wriggling and squirming with an answer, but they will not just admit a mistake, hold their hands up and say sorry. They are still trying to cover their backs. The latest is that trees fallen across the path had to be cleared away. That's true, but not on our section.

Any trees that fall over our section of the footpath are cleared away in just a few days. The other areas owned by other people, the trees have been laid over the path for 2 years and more. But that is nothing to do with us.

Well anyhow we have the local paper onto it.  The reporter came to us and took a look and agreed with us. So the story could be in our local very soon.

To some it may seem nothing, but to us it's adding insult to injury. We have looked after and maintained this footpath since it was reopened 17 years ago trying to make it a natural walk of dappled sunlight and varied leaf patterns with contrasting viewpoints.

What we don't need is some idiot who has watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre reliving his pathetic fantasy in the countryside.

A peaceful sunlit woodland (before the contractors hit it)

The irony of it was we was visiting the Botanic Gardens of Wales at the time.

Free resources

Trying to keep my computing as green as I can, I am always looking for ways to improve its use. Here are a couple of utilities that I would like to share with anyone interested. Both are free to use and will cut down on waste.

The first is an ink saver called Preton Saver Home. When you click the final print button, Preton pops up where you adjust the amount of ink used for the print job. It ranges from high quality print to draught print, with in between's so you can adjust to your own liking. It even tells you how much  money you have saved in ink for each job. A great way to cut down on ink wastage.

The next helps save on paper and frustration. How many times have you wanted to print out information from the web and ended up with all the bits on the web page you don't, want printed out?

Copy and pasting into Word or Open Office from the web page is laborious, and the formatting of the page is always to cock. Get Print What You Like. It sits on the toolbar in the browser ready to click when you want to print out information from the web page. You then cut out anything you don't want until you get to the bare bones of the information you want printed. Click print and you have a good clean copy. No more coloured ads, web buttons or pictures that have no relevance to the information. A great ink saver along with Preton.

Another handy thing with Print What You Like, the information can be saved as a PDF file and not printed at all, 0% ink used!

Nothing to do with what I have written above, just thought you might like to see this lovely Rambler of ours, Leo's Eye.

Snake

Walking up to the shed this morning I came across the most beautiful grass snake sunning itself on the warm concrete. A deep olive green with bright yellow V behind it's head. It was at least 2 1/2 foot (75cm) long. Slipping away as quiet as I could to get the camera, I got back as fast as was possible without too much noise, but alas it was gone.

Back to digging out compost from the heap, I found yet more evidence of grass snakes in the garden, egg shells from previously hatched youngsters.

Grass snake egg shells

All in all there were thirty two shells, so there should be a good few survive to adulthood.

Our garden certainly suits them with its wild and uncultivated areas, which Grass snakes love. Along with large slow compost heaps that make the ideal place to lay eggs with the gentle warmth from this type of heap.

Principle food are amphibians, which means the toads and the frogs have to watch out, but as we see quite a number of these around, the snake population are not making too many inroads into the numbers.

We feel proud though to have Britain's largest reptile living around us, marvellous.

Over Hybridisation

We have had two deaths of late, one was old Ma goose. She was quite old around about 18 she had been going into decline for some time. We believe she had cancer in the end she would not eat or even drink.

The next was during the week we had to get one of our Cherry Valley ducks up to the vet as an emergency. She went from what seemed a healthy little thing swimming on the pond and eating, to completely collapsed creature whose legs had gone and eyes looked really strange.

Examination at the vets found that she was actually blind and she had no use to her legs. She was either suffering from poisoning or a possible embolism on the brain. But we had to make the decision to have put to sleep.

We went ahead with a post-mortem just to see if any clues came out of it and possibly avoid anything befalling the other three ducks. But nothing showed up so an embolism was the probable cause of her decline.

Sylvie, our one remaining Cherry Valley duck.

Was it anything to do with over hybridisation that pushed her body too far, she was underweight and had a tremendous appetite. Compared to the Khaki Campbell's, Cherry Valley duck eggs are considerably larger. Maybe they are a bit over hybridised and can push some individuals beyond what the body can sustain. Unfortunately as with all fowl, there is not much knowledge on this point; as stock they are pretty short lived. Individuals not shaping up are culled pretty quick.

Anyhow it's only a thought in this case about over hybridisation.

 

Over Hybridised Cattle

When it comes to cattle it definitely applies. Most people in Britain know of the proposed badger cull in Wales and the movement toward something similar in England. What many have no clue about is the weaknesses of the Holstein X Friesian breed of cattle. There is not a lot of information concerning this available to the public. Here though is some evidence showing up the over hybridisation in animals.

Holstein X Friesian have been bred as milking machines. So efficient are they at turning their food to milk, the animal itself in most cases become malnourished, not receiving enough food to maintain it's body systems to the degree it should.

Here is the interesting point that is never acknowledged. Tuberculosis is a disease of poverty; malnourishment is one of the prime causes of the contraction of TB, malnourishment of the body makes it less able to resist the disease.

Holstein X Friesian cattle are living lives of permanent malnourishment, irrespective of how much food they are given. They are extremely susceptible to many ailments and diseases, often with the average lifespan of only two years. It is little wonder that TB is rife amongst many herds of cattle.

Poor hybridisation can lead to weaknesses that cause disablement and suffering, but should be recognised for what it is. Unfortunately in the case of cattle the government departments are loath to admit this is one of the prime causes of herd breakdowns with TB, in fact they say there is no evidence to suggest this. Yet a study in Ireland points to the genetic weaknesses of the Holstein X Friesian breed. Another in Ethiopia is recommending farmers to return to the old Zebu breed of cattle who are so much less susceptible to bTB.

Pointing the finger at our badgers is lazy science, it is not getting to the real cause of the bTB in Britain, and one of the main causes is over hybridisation.

Organic Foods Really Healthy?

There is what is called the halo effect where something is perceived as being good for you therefore more gets eaten or overeaten. One good example is where fast food chains label some of their food products as a healthier option, maybe because it contains salad of some kind. Even though the dressing may contain masses of fat or oils and spoonfuls of salt and sugar.

The perception though is because it is called a healthier option then more can be eaten without regard to the true ingredients that are involved.

For years we have always felt this about some organic foodstuffs. An easy example is the Organic White loaf, what a health contradiction! Now as far as we are concerned white flour products as part of the regular diet is crazy. Extracting the fibre particle of wheat along with much of the vitamin and mineral proponents from a food is a crazy thing to do. You are just asking for trouble in future years. We know of so many people who have died from bowel cancer, most of mature years who have spent many years eating low fibre diets.

A refined product be it organic or inorganic leads to the same conclusion, the probability of bowel cancer in the future or degenerative diseases due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Other convenience foods can be found that contain organic components. Still full of salt, sugar and fats or oils. Not exactly a healthy option to be eaten on a regular basis. Yet the Organic halo lead people to the wrong conclusion that it must be healthy therefore they can eat it with impunity.

Beware the Halo.

Here is a plant that definitely should wear a Halo. Erysimum cheirii 'Harpur Crewe' .

The double flowered form of the natural Wallflower. Cheery bright yellow flowers and what a lovely scent to it. Delicious old Wallflower scent that really raises the spirits.

It loves growing in really well drained places where the soil is not too rich. Poorer soil leads to a longer life of the plant. This plant is growing right on the edge of a tarmac drive where the edge is set on concrete, so the roots are in a very thin amount of soil, which it really thrives on.

Close up of the gorgeously scented double flowers.

Radioactive Poisoning

Here in Britain we have already felt the effects of the radioactive poison spewing out of the reactor in Fukushima, Japan. The Health Protection Agency confirmed that tests in Oxford and Glasgow picked up Radioactive particles of Iodine from the stricken reactor. Although they hasten to add that it is in miniscule levels that are unlikely to harm anyone over here.

Then again this is not the first time that we have had another countries radioactive poisoning reach this far. The accident at Chernobyl spewed out so much that the plume drifted across Europe and onto Britain. We are still feeling the legacy here in Wales where the radioactive particles fell onto some of the North Wales hillside farms. Farmers there still have to have their lambs tested by the Ministry before they can send them to market.

People though are worried about the poisoning affecting them, and rightly so. In the US sales of Iodine supplements have outstripped supply and many are not to be had anywhere.

Here in the UK when Chernobyl went off, Iodine supplies where readied but never really made available. We though continued on with our own supplementation.

We have always eaten seaweed supplements as part of our diet, buying Wakame and Kombu, some of the stronger more richer seaweed foods along with others including of course the traditional Laver bread available here in Wales produced by Penclawdd Shellfish Processors.

Kombu, a relative of Kelp is available in dried strips.

Seaweed is the ideal solution to the cloud of Radioactive Iodine particles. It naturally supplements the thyroid with Iodine and stops the intake of the radioactive particles into the Thyroid where they would lodge there and create much harm in later years by causing cancer. Not only that but the seaweed enhances all body systems with fantastic doses of every trace element that are needed for healthy living.

There is only one problem now, Kombu and Wakame are grown around Japan, so future stocks could well be contaminated by the radioactive fall out running into the sea. Others believe this as stocks of the seaweed are running out in the shops, where people are stock piling for the future. So we have to find another source of seaweed.

We have found one, a company in the Shetland Isles who sell edible seaweeds and garden supplements.

   Tub of edible seaweed.

I shall be placing an order in with them to try their product along with one for their granular seaweed plant food. What many people do not realise is that adding an Iodine rich supplement to the soil for vegetables to grow in means that the vegetables will uptake Iodine and supply it through that channel as well.

As many people are Iodine deficient even though they take Iodised cooking salt, it merely stops them from succumbing to Iodine deficiencies that would show up otherwise. To have sufficient Iodine in the diet purely through salt supplementation you would kill yourself with Sodium excess. With todays emphasis on salt free diets, and rightly so, this is not a supplement that should be relied upon.

Everyone therefore should aim to eat more sea vegetables for an all round improved diet.

The N Factor

Most of us are aware by now of the impact of Carbon dioxide on the environment. We are also aware of how our life styles create Co2 to a more or lesser extent. But there is yet another important factor to consider and that is the Nitrogen emitted due to our life styles.

Nitrogen is an essential part of our lives, we are surrounded by it within the air and although we do not actually utilise the Nitrogen when we breath it is an important part of our atmosphere and environment.

Without Nitrogen plants simply would not grow, it is essential to their makeup and ours, it is where protein comes from.

But unfortunately we have been too proliferate with Nitrogen. Once we found the way to make artificial Nitrogen to add to fertilisers, we used it with careless abandon. Allowing the false principle, if a little is good a lot will be great. So too much has been added to soils for crops and much wasted as runoff to create problems elsewhere. This runoff ends up in rivers, lakes and the sea encouraging algal blooms that can poison waters. The Nitrogen itself can poison drinking water filling the water with Nitrates that can cause cancer and certainly causes Blue Baby syndrome where it decreases the haemoglobin in newly born babies that can lead to death.

Other factors that can add to the Nitrogen overload are from burning fossil fuels in engines such as vehicles and plane travel.

Our waste products are full of Nitrogen. The perversity of it is we use ever more expensive energy to extract the Nitrogen from the air while throwing Nitrogen down the toilet and use more energy to break it down to re release it back into the atmosphere.

Changing life styles can help reduce the burden of Nitrogen being released such as reducing meat consumption and cutting back on travel. Further things can be done to help. A helpful guide can be found here at N-Print where you can calculate your Nitrogen foot print and see what measures can be done to improve your life style. Lots of useful information to be found about Nitrogen and the impact on the environment.

Not only can you reduce the Nitrogen from what you use but also what you waste. One simple thing to do is to compost all your kitchen and garden waste. Compost properly and you lock Nitrogen up in useful material that can feed your plants and garden.

But what about the flushables? Whenever you go to the toilet you flush loads of Nitrogen down the pan! Okay the heavy parts can be a bit difficult to utilise unless you are set up properly with a good composting method that can deal with it, but the liquid factor is easy to use. Now it is Spring, well up here in the Northern regions it is. Plants are beginning to show life and are gasping for nutrients. So why not feed them freely with a liquid life giver.

These Violas were fed solely on urine once a week.

Urine is a great booster in the garden, virtually every plant will benefit from it. You can feed plants once a week with dilute urine and watch them thrive. Most plants can easily tolerate urine diluted at 10 parts water to one of urine. Some Nitrogen lovers can take it stronger. Cabbages can take it neat up to twice a week. Just water it onto the roots as with all plants.

A reasonable sized garden can take quite a bit of urine over the week. Larger gardens you may find you are tempted to drink more as you simply cannot produce enough to feed everything, especially when you see the results from feeding urine to the plants.

It's also a great additive to compost heaps, where you never seem to have enough to add. It helps break down the contents fantastically.

Smell? There is none as such with fresh urine. If it is kept hanging around for about three days it starts to smell a bit, but that is because it is losing the Nitrogen as it breaks down, not what you want. Once it hits the ground bacteria in the soil start breaking it down for plant use and you don't get smell while this is happening.

Got to go, where's that watering can?

Spawn To Be Wild

In the shallower part leading to the smaller pond where the Ducks and Goose walk, a frog has been busy.

The trouble is with all these webbed feet the spawn does not stand much chance so it had to be moved.

We quickly transferred the spawn up into the wild pond higher up in the garden.

Here it can develop undisturbed and in peace in the wilder part of the garden. We ended up though having four more lots of spawn to transfer into the pond, the frog being very busy down by the ducks and goose.

Still here in this pond it will be quite safe to an extent. It will have to share space with the toad spawn that always ends up in there and also the Newts that live in there.

We don't have to worry too much though about competition for space as we always seem to have a great number of frogs in the garden and toads who get everywhere.

I'm pleased to say that Ma Goose is now enjoying her company. She seems to be actively seeking out the ducks to be alongside them at times. All five where floating on the pond together the other day. Though she does walk off on her own to graze on the grass further over and sometimes just to doze by herself.

New Additions

We have some new additions to the family. We wanted some company for Old Ma Goose, but with her age thought that another goose may be too much for her. A young goose could soon become a bully, that is to an older goose who has become more placid over the years. Placid as in comparison to geese in general.

So something that looks similar but no threat to her. Ducks came to mind.

I have always fancied Kahki Campbells for their egg laying abilities. The conversion of slug to egg is very appealing. We tracked down some point of lay ducks from West Wales Poultry. Nigel the proprietor was really friendly and helpful, showing us all round his place to view the different varieties of chickens and ducks.

When we got there the pond out front had a lot of very gregarious white ducks moving all over the place. They turned out to be Cherry Valley ducks. They have been bred for the table but have turned out to be excellent eggers. So now we ended up coming away with two Kahki Campbells and two Cherry Valley ducks.

Waiting to go into the water.

The Khaki's make little wittering noises along with a quack when they are in the shed. Unlike the Cherry valleys who make a very definite quack all the time.

Time to get the new pond finished.

As you see it is being well inspected by Old ma Goose who has been doing a lot of supervising.

Completely Mad.

The Postmen that deliver to us are completely mad, well they seem to be once they leave the road and enter our track.

The Postie said he thought something jumped out of the bank and he only twitched the steering wheel to avoid it and it was whipped out of his hands this is how he ended up. It is one of the longest straightest parts we have on the track!

But he managed to come a cropper. I had to walk down to the end to make sure he was okay and not lying at the bottom of the hedge around the corner. He was fine thankfully.

His boss came up with a 4X4 and hauled it out without much damage to the bank, sod the van.

After they had gone I found a chunk of trim from the van in the bank, I'll give it back to him tomorrow :-)

Critical Threshold Reached

After recalculating the world use of Phosphorus, researchers think we have now reached the threshold where stocks will  start declining.

Phosphate rock from which phosphorus is mined from, formed from long dead sea deposits. The deposits are actually  many millions of dead sea creatures, mainly fish; laid down in huge numbers, then covered over by mud and finally over millions of years transformed into Phosphate rich rock.

Deposits of these rocks are found in very few places, the USA, China and Morocco being the main sources. But we have mined them voraciously, transforming the rock, in a particularly dirty manufacturing process, into fertilizer such as superphosphate  and Sodium triphosphate that is used in many laundry powders.

The problem with these chemicals  the Phosphate is in an unnatural soluble state. Phosphorus in soil is only normally unlocked for plant use by bacterial or fungal actions. But we have bypassed that process so that rain will dilute the Phosphorus into a liquid salt that plants will absorb.

The  only trouble is much of the liquid Phosphate washes away before plants can touch it and in the case of the Sodium triphosphate added to washing powders as a form of softener, that too is just in liquid form flushed down the sewers. All this Phosphate ends up in rivers and lakes creating dangerous algal blooms.

This is a complete waste of a resource and it is running out. There are no more ancient seabeds around and non forming in the modern world. Phosphate rock is going to run out. Estimates predict shortages occurring in the next 20 years. This is no news to me, information was around over 35 years ago that this would happen and in about the time scale predicted.

What can we do?

Look for washing powders that do not contain Phosphates. Some manufacturers state this quite plainly on the box. Look for natural washing detergents and you can be more sure of this.

Buy organic foods and grow organically.

Organic practices are the only way to recycle Phosphorus back into the environment. Anything that is composted contains Phosphorus from the crops that the compost is made from. Organic methods also conserve Phosphorus that is released  by natural breakdown in the soil  at a pace that plants need it without wasting the Phosphate by making it too soluble and washing away.

Phosphate poor soils can be topped up with Phosphate rock. That is Phosphate rich rock simply ground up into a fine substance to enrich soil. It is not soluble and will not wash away. One application can last up to four years whereas an application of Superphosphate is only good for one season.

Bone meal is another slow release source of Phosphorus and you are doing a better job of recycling than using  ground Phosphate rock.

Much of the Phosphates wasted in gardens are applied as fertilizers to lawns. Most gardeners apply in a heavy handed way thinking if a little does the lawn good a larger amount will be doubly good. It just simply washes away out of reach from the grass in the next heavy rain.

If you need to apply fertilizer to lawns then use an organic form such as chicken manure, dried cow manure or similar. Blood, fish, bone will also fertilize the lawn and all of them are slow release. Then recycle the lawn mowing's back onto the compost heap where the Phosphorus will end up elsewhere in the garden.

Rake out the moss from the lawn now to invigorate the grass meaning you will not have to add so much fertilizer to get a lovely green sward. Compost the moss of course, it makes a great additive to compost heaps.

Ecological Collapse

Extremely troubling news broke the other day. A research paper in the Science Magazine found that the drought in the Amazon rainforest in 2010 was more severe than the drought there in 2005. The 2005 drought was supposed to one in a hundred year event, then it happened again in 2010.

The Amazon river and it's tributaries fell to the lowest levels on record. Tracts of the forest dried out and died. Some even suffered from forest fires, which is unknown in the area as it is tropical rainforest and usually too wet to burn.

The usual area to suffer from drought in the Amazon is the Northern part. This is linked to the natural El Nino effect occurring in the Pacific and is a natural cycle The latest area was much further South and it is believed it was possibly brought on by the warming of tropical Atlantic. At the moment it is still too early to know if it is anything to do with global warming itself, but it is heavily suspected.

The big problem is the release of Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As the trees die and rot down or burn due to forest fires, the stored Co2 is released into the atmosphere instead of being locked up in the eco system. The 2005 drought was estimated to have released around 5 billion tons of Co2, just under the USA yearly total; 2010 has not been calculated as yet. The world cannot take this and the fear is that it could lead to a feedback loop where the extra Co2 brings more warming that leads to more drought and even more death of the forest leading to increased Co2, and so on.

So what can we do?

We can help in initiatives such as those promoted by organisations such as Conservation International, where forest is properly managed and replanted leaving virgin wood alone. Increasing the density of forest throughout the world takes up Co2 and locks it up into the eco system out of harms way.

Not Just Rainforests

Rain forests are not the only forests we need to keep in good health and replant. Northern forests such as the Boreal forest of Canada and Russia have just as exceptional Co2 lockup systems. It's all too easy to think that outside of the rain forest does not count.

So we can support big projects involving huge tracts, but it all seems very impersonal and sometimes hard to relate to. We need to do something  as individuals.

One of the simplest ways is to plant a tree of some kind in your garden. There is still time to do this in the early months of Spring. just make sure you keep it watered in Summer.

Trees are a fantastic way of locking up Co2, as they grow and get bigger and thicker you can literally see it laying down the wood which is composed of Co2.

I have no room for a tree

I hear this all the time and it just is not the case. Trees are very flexible to grow and there are methods in which very large forest trees can be kept to a manageable size, yet still lock up Co2 in their wood.

Here is a good example.

This is Pat's tree, it is about 20 years old, an Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) or the European Ash. Pat has this tree trimmed every Winter to keep the shape. The trunk and branches are lovely and thick, making a quite marvelous architectural look, and there is loads of Co2 locked in that wood. If it was allowed to grow normally it could reach 20-35 metres tall, a very large tree.

Ok so she is not locking so much Co2  up in it as it would do growing normally, but as they say every little helps. A big plus is the benefits to wildlife in the area who can take advantage of the tree environment.

We have numerous trees in our garden, some are fully grown specimens but others are kept smaller through pollarding.

Pollarding

Pollarding is a method where a tree is harvested for wood by trimming the branches when they reach a certain size. The wood can be used for various things or simply as fire wood. A pollarded tree is cut at or above head height, that's assuming you are of fairly normal height.

An Ash pollard that is harvested for fire wood.

You may think now, aha, if you burn the wood the Co2 is released so you gain nothing. Not so. Each time you harvest the wood and burn it, the tree reabsorbs the Co2 released by burning to make new branches, ready to harvest in future years. Then comes the wonderful bit. The trunk keeps getting bigger and bigger over the years. The tree lays down more wood in the trunk taking in and locking up ever more Co2 and even more wonderful, a pollarded tree can outlive a natural tree by around 4 times the life span and sometimes more. Some of the very old Oaks in Britain that are centuries old were originally pollard trees used for building wooden ships in the Tudor period. Co2 locked up for centuries.

This is a pollarded Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) we grow for sticks.

Pollarding is a great way of growing trees and keeping them at a reasonable height, yet suck out Co2 from the atmosphere.

For more definition on pollarding have a look at Wikipedia .

Coppice Trees

Another method is to coppice trees. This does not lay down quite so much Co2 in the trunks but is still useful making plenty of  branches for various uses and you do create a very long lived trunk of tree.

This is quite a nice young Willow coppice being started that I saw in a garden. These trunks will over a number of years get bigger and bigger and the poll where it shoots out of will become wonderfully gnarly.

More definition of Coppicing trees again at Wikipedia .

We can make a direct difference as individuals within our own immediate environment, just get planting.

Growing Good Health

We are right at the beginning of the new year and new season. Latest research has come out to show that those that eat more fruit and vegetables per day have a lower risk of Ischaemic heart attacks and dying from them. This is one of the most common forms of heart attack suffered.

A European Prospective Investigation found those that ate 8 portions of fruit and vegetables a day compared to those that only ate 3 portions had a 22% lower risk of dying from IHD.

Now a portion in their eyes is only 80 grams, that's the equivalent to a small carrot, a medium apple or a small banana! Only eight portions in those quantities.

With the new season just starting now is the time to plan to grow some of your own fresh vegetables or fruit. The reason why? If you grow it yourself you are more likely to eat it because you will not want to waste the work growing and nurturing something you have produced yourself. Plus there is nothing fresher more vital and healthy than something you have picked straight from the garden and eaten in a short period of time. It beats any shop bought produce.

So boost the quantities you eat by growing more yourself, your health will grow because of it.

Hedge Trimming

We are trimming some of our hedges around the garden to reduce a bit of their height. We try to maintain them at around 8-10 feet which is the optimum height for maintaining healthy wildlife cover. It seems to work as the bird population in our garden is tremendous.

But we end up with loads of trimmings. The simplest answer is to shred them down. We cannot at the moment afford a large shredder but you would be surprised what we achieve with a small domestic form.

It is electric powered and chops stuff up with a cog mechanism that crushes and cuts. I have over the years used quite a number of shredders of varied types, and the one we have is pretty miniature to some I have used. But it does a pretty good job as long as you are not too short on patience.

The shreddings can be composted, the woody components take around two to two and a half years to break down really well, but makes a great soil building compost.

Wood chips and leaves, mostly holly make a good path cover.

We also use it as shreddings for our paths through the garden. The great part of doing this is the different kind of environment this creates. One that is rich in foods for masses of insects that then create a living larder for birds and other creatures. During the very cold months the soil under the shredding mulch stayed soft and was much appreciated by a mole that travelled throughout the garden along the pathways. Where it stopped it threw up piles of lovely sifted soil which I have collected for potting later in the year.

Moonlight Becomes You

With perfectly clear skies and the time for a full moon, to be cliched, it's absolutely magical.

I cannot resist a walk out on a moonlit night, when everything is bathed in white moonlight, the goddess Selena gazing down upon the land.

Cold eye of Selena casts her white light.

Taking the camera with me and setting on available light allowed me to capture some of the feeling, although it only hints at how it looked and felt.

Deep shadows create a feeling of mystery on familiar walks.

Trees are silvered edged.

Next time the moon is out bright, try a walk under her, maybe you too will feel some of the mystical qualities it gives to the land.

Mystery Walk

Breaking up a garden into different compartments can make a piece of land seem far larger than it is. This works on even small gardens. Simply designing it so that the whole garden cannot be seen with a single glance.

Okay our garden is that much larger than others. The top area is an acre in size. But still we have created areas that have to be walked to to find them, you have to take a mystery walk around paths. Much of the garden is simple in itself, large trees and shrubs, all to enrich the area and attract wildlife. What has now come on nicely is our Holly tunnel. Part of the hedge on one of the banks around the perimeter of the garden was Holly (Ilex aquifolium). This area of Holly is mostly male, so we don't get berries on the bush, but it is valuable for pollinating other female bushes in the garden so they burst with berries during the Winter. Well for as long as the birds leave them alone, but that is fine by us.

The tunnel creates a wonderful link from the bottom area of the garden into the centre part and is a cool dark walk on a hot Summer day.

Love Lichens

Living over the West of Britain means we have a damper atmosphere, and cleaner air! This is amply shown by the amount of lichen that grow on our trees.

It's a very good indicator that air pollution levels are very low if lichen grow in abundance. The greater numbers of varied lichens mean less pollution, the longer the lichen the cleaner the air.

Many people worry about lichen taking nutrients from the tree. But they are definitely not parasitic. They take nothing whatsoever from the tree and are completely harmless, in fact they give shelter to many insects over winter creating a well stocked larder for birds. We feel they add an air of maturity to a garden.

Last One?

Just a day back I released the 13th Vole caught in the cupboard under the sink. Hopefully the last, fingers crossed.

Cold Lovers

Cold days and nights are no deterrent to some cold lovers around. During the evenings, attracted by light from the room small winter moths gather on the opposite side of the glass.

Winter moths (Operophtera brumata)

They are classed as pests by many, especially apple growers who spray their trees with regularity when the small looper caterpillars start munching holes in the foliage and sometimes small fruitlets. The caterpillars can it seems go so far as to defoliate trees, although the tree usually overcomes this to regrow new leaves.

We never see much damage to our Apple trees, and take little notice of what their is. Granted we are surrounded by other trees that the moths show a liking to such as Oak, Ash and Sycamore, so maybe it spreads the numbers over other trees. The caterpillars are in fact a very valuable source of food just at the right time for nesting birds to feed their young. So for us we are glad to see there are an abundance of these little moths around to feed our bird population. We turned the light off and within seconds there was not a moth to be seen.

Delicate Flower

Flowering in spite of all the cold weather, this small Helleborus is a welcome sight throughout winter.

Helleborus 'Silver Lace'

A small plant when I first bought it and now bulking up quite nicely in the garden, giving some lovely welcome flowers in the dark Winter days.

Fungi

It was quite surprising to find this small cluster of fungi growing on a stump in the hedge. Most have long disappeared, yet these appear after the really cold weather and deep freeze that we have just had.

The last of our visitors?

Two days back I had to release two more voles caught under the kitchen sink. This time I released them a good distance away, well over three times the minimum distance that is needed for small rodents, just in case we are getting revisits from previous releases.

This morning there was yet another captured, this means there have been twelve in total. So the traps will have to be reprimed and set once more.

They Are Still Here

It's simply incredible, we are up to nine voles under the sink. The eighth was caught New Years Eve morning. Unfortunately as I took it in the trap out of the front gates and a little walk down the drive, I felt a wobble in the trap and looked to find it had escaped. No sign of it anywhere, it had just ran into the undergrowth as quick as anything.

So I re-primed the trap and put it back under the sink. checking up early on New Years Eve, there was nothing in the trap, but all the Peanut Butter had gone. So I took it out and found this to my surprise.

In a short period of the afternoon, one had chewed a hole in the trap to escape! This really took some doing. It had started with one of the drainage holes that can be seen in the bottom of the trap and just gnawed through the plastic. Bits were everywhere on the shelf. It's possible that this is a returning vole from the one that escaped, although it is difficult to see how they are getting in here other than the way we speculate on, by one of the cats bringing in a heavily pregnant female.

I have now made a repair with a mouldable filler and wait for it to really harden. Meanwhile I found another of my live mouse traps and have put that under the sink, although it is not one of the most successful kinds I have used. But it may do the trick.

Thankfully voles as well as mice are not as hard to catch as rats in a live trap. Rats are so intelligent and you have to use your wits against them. It's easy to make them suspicious of a trap and I have found you have to put some really delicious stuff in to tempt them. If you fail once with a rat and it gets out of the trap before it springs, it is a heck of a job to entice them again as they have learnt not to trust the trap.

Mice on the other hand don't seem to pick up that the trap is out to get them and will come back over and over again to the same trap to eventually get caught.

Minimum distances

If you do catch things in live traps, there are minimum distances to release the animals. Mice and small rodents should be released no less than 100 yards as the crow flies. A bit further away just to be safe. Any less and they will keep returning.

Rats on the other hand have to taken 1 mile away from where they are caught, otherwise you will be plagued by the same animal who is a lot more wily for the experience.

Caution

A word of caution. Here in Britain, rats are classed as vermin and as the law stands once caught cannot be released again even into the wild (this also includes Grey Squirrels). So it is left to your discretion if you are in this situation. Some people catch them live and then drown them. This too is illegal and anybody caught doing so can be prosecuted for unnecessary suffering of an animal.

Happy New Year