Graham

Wood Blewit?

At that length you'd be best asking a local sawmill if they can machine round cleft oak for you.

A few dildos, assorted trousers with large brown lumps in on m'way embankment and a high pressure gas main ripped up with a Becker stump ripper. That one hissed a bit!

The liquidator should be looking to get rid of stock as quickly as possible and turn it into cash. Doesn't look like a good liquidation sale to me with reserves on everything as that won't encourage bidding.

Probably should have but at the time I just wanted it forgotten and done with.

With a pink Saharan sun and a feeling of impending doom my dog is acting very strangely. He senses something and is clinging to me like a baby.

The worms are just feasting on the slime flux etc. It's possibly honey fungus.

A client took me to court once. I'd done plenty of work for him in the past and he phoned me one day to tell me one of his trees had been damaged in a storm. I popped out to see the tree and told him I'd make it safe and then return when I was able to fell and clear up. I cut up the timber on the ground, removed the hung up branches and stacked it all for later removal. I told him it may be a while before I could get back as I was very busy with other storm damage. He stated to phone regularly reminding me about the tree and then issued a court summons. He stated that it had caused him him a lot of worry, the stacked timber had damaged his grass and that he had to employ a contractor to fell the tree, clear up and make good the grassed area. His claim was for the cost of the above plus his time. He was a retired solicitor and I can still see the smirk on his face as he looked at me in court. It was dismissed as he was being unreasonable in expecting me to finish the work during a very busy time. A professional a***hole who didn't even pay for my time making it safe for him.

When I was 17 one of my jobs was hedge trimming....bloody miles of it. I used a pneumatic hedge trimmer and the compressor was driven off the tractor pto. The vibrations were so bad that my fingers used to lock into one position and the pain in my joints was awful. Thought nothing of it at the time and endured weeks of it but I'm sure it helped out my journey into whitefinger and swollen painful fingers.

I had them both at the same time once . Bloody painful.

I've had a little bit of success. About 50 willows from cuttings along a local river. Hopefully they'll provide food and shelter long after I'm gone. I'm also experimenting a little. In each hedge I lay I'm planting an alder buckthorn as a food plant for Brimstones.

Pseudomonas syringae and maybe shothole too.

Fraxinus angustifolia.

Pholiota squarrosa ?

I was pulled by the police and had to follow him to an M6 vosa yard. He pulled me because the plates didn't match. At the yard I was put onto the weighbridge and found to be over on the rear axle (can't remember the weight over). The weight plate was also missing from the trailer and a faulty light. Transit 3.5 with 2ton digger on a twin axle trailer. The policeman was a decent bloke. He was at the end of his shift and gave me two options: a, accept a fine for overweight or b, argue the case and let VOSA crawl all over it. Easy choice! He also told me to keep a written record of all journeys which involved towing a trailer.

Bugger! Hedge laying matches that weekend. I won't bother sharpening tools.

As mentioned before; it's far easier to grind the stumps out deep. If you try and skim the tops to just below ground level your machine will be bucking, jumping and shaking itself to pieces esp with ash.

What we used to do was stump grind the whole area and then rake it out. The rooted stems won't be very deep. You should be able to get everything out.

Try these people http://www.digbits.co.uk/pins-bushes-seals-shims.html

Compression check?

Thanks. The photo was taken at Wimpole scythe festival. I was just walking back after mowing. The stick was used to tether the dog because he gets inquisitive and thinks animals might be flushed where I'm mowing. It's a 95cm blade. I broke that snath later in the day so have now made my own.

A Cheshire hedge to build. The hedge wasn't good being 5' tall and flailed. The face side meant working from a 3' deep ditch and left-handed.. Cheshire hedges should be built narrow and without dead wood hence a few gaps in the top. Made the best of a bad job and managed a 1st.

Me and my dog this year.

Think it was '88 when I went there. The only ones I've ever seen in the UK. Walked bloody miles down the river with my old dog to get there because the alternative was to trespass across a farmer's field and didn't want to do that only to find that others had done just that! I think that was the year the last shrike turned up to breed at Santon Downham. The male sang but the female never turned up. There was an old chap there in tears as an era had come to an end. I returned some years later to do a job in the area and many of the poplars had been felled.

Poplar plantations are the favourite haunt of golden orioles. Whenever I'm near one in the UK it reminds me of France and Spain and I half expect to hear one calling :-)