nepia

Yep, that's it. Look at meeee... thud!

That Leyland plantation is Tolkienesque! I've never heard of the ability of MP to coppice; I assumed that cutting the stem below the existing branch line would kill it. Another schoolday - thanks. As an aside... you have great knowledge of East Sussex; do you know anything of the history of the Euc plantation beside the A21 at Lamberhurst? It's been there most, if not all of my life and that started when Yuri Gagarin was doing his thing!

That's good news. Having a bird kill itself against your house window makes you feel guilty about being a human being! We have a picture window that allows imperfect vision right through the house. It has the blood of a couple of blackbirds, tits and a Gr.Spotted Woodpecker fledgling on its hands. Pigeons have bounced off, one leaving a most artistic detailed outline of a bird with wings spread.

Rescued this little one unharmed from a soft-mouthed cat last week

A small point but the Brazil figure is almost certainly well ahead of ours as they aren't counting Covid deaths in the favellas according to a Brazilian friend.

Good one. Maintaining the Sarf East beetle theme my lad had this in his garden in Beckenham a couple of days ago

Which is why I lay mine on top of a pallet on top of the full IBC. That reason and because it allows further airflow across the top of the logs.

How about weaving the extra finer wire in and out of the verticals and tensioning it on every post with big staples?

I use Tarpaulin Heavy Duty Ground Sheet Camping Tarp 185gsm Blue/Brown WWW.EBAY.CO.UK Blue/Brown Heavy Weight Tarpaulin 185gsm. At 185gsm, our new Brown / Blue tarpaulins begin the heavy duty range of... The oldest ones are at least 5 years old and I'd give them 8/10 for condition.

...but reasonable tarps aren't expensive!

Er - no but I can't wait for the video! Not very helpful - sorry ? To be a bit more constructive... I'd say that successful chipping of that dreadful foliage would depend on the chipper being able to grab a tip via a powered infeed roller or two while you jump out of the way. Feeding the stuff into a gravity fed machine would be a form of torture I'd say. But if you do it I wish you the best of luck.

Pear!

As they're on conifers I'd say Phaeolus schweinitzii is a good candidate; a bit difficult telling from knackered old brackets though! In the extraordinary event I'm right it's not good news for the trees. But wait for better knowledge to come along.

But then the bark does look more like pine than plum!

I'd say beech for pics 1&2, ash for pic 3; the black ball of Daldinia concentrica makes it highly likely.

That's good to know. I've only ever had any quantity of it for firewood use on one occasion. I didn't get round to processing it for nearly a year by which time it had noticeably degraded and quite a lot went to waste. Sorry Al if you're reading!

Yuletide bedecking does indeed still occur

Gloria was the love of Stevie's life for a while some years back - an on/off kind of relationship: one minute she could do no wrong, the next she was gone only to be back months later. I think it was a classic case of couldn't live with her, couldn't live without her. I hope things worked themselves out in the end. Gloria was a Greenmech CS100 ?

To answer just one of those numerous points: you won't manually push/pull such a machine up ramps onto a pickup on your own. My Jo Beau M300 weighs ~140kg and I manage fine pulling it with a rope. I couldn't manage an 18hp Greenmech CS100 @190kg. But a chipper with a 25hp engine isn't 'wee'. I wish it was; I'd be home for lunch every time!

Morning Squaredy. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

Never seen anything like it. Could the fluff be parasitic fungal mycelia perhaps?

Squaredy, I'll try and replicate that cedar pic for you.

Not when you pollard it into a hedge it isn't!

Well I thought you gave the reason in your original post - under valued! But as you ask... Field Maple is far from common enough as one of our native species, being hugely outnumbered by damned foreigners!. It's a lovely tree to look at. The timber of a mature specimen is awesome - such swirling grain and often pippy too. I believe it does, or at least can, form the food for many larvae. And it's adaptable; it makes a fine hedge as well as a stand alone tree. I took a line of unnecessarily tall ones in my own garden (~18') down to 5' years ago and now enjoy an 8' hedge. Your choice of Leyland is interesting - and enlightened. The trees aren't wrong, it's their management that goes awry. A mature specimen in its own space is a graceful thing. I bow to your knowledge on the timber for functional use, I like it to burn. I'll get you a pic of the Caterham cedar next time I'm passing. I can walk to it in 15 minutes. What was your experience of it? Jon

Field Maple.