Beardie

The 'best' and 'fastest' are probably two different things.

Thanks for the info. It just looked too good to be true at that price.

There are some small ratchet winches, rated at 2 tonnes pull, on eBay for about £10. Would these be any good for occasional use?

No, bad link.

Yes. I noticed that, steam powered vehicles are also exempt, so you could put all your prunings to good use instead of chipping them.

I suppose the LPG exemption is on account of the scarcity of LPG filling stations. Finding one is going to put you well over your hours.

Simple supply and demand. Fewer people can afford a new truck, so they hang on to the old one for longer. Fewer secondhand trucks coming onto the market creates a relative scarcity, driving up the price.

When you sit in a train or cinema seat and 'overflow' over the armrests into the seats either side.

Gosh, some people move about in their sleep, don't they? :-)

My only experience with chestnut shakes was at the Week in the Woods at the Sustainability Centre in 2008. Pre-drilling wasn't even an issue, we just cleft them, draw-knifed them and nailed them on. Green wood is soft, so it just deformed around the nail, rather than splitting.

Try the Weald & Downland Museum, Weald & Downland Open Air Museum | Home Page the Amberley Museum, Welcome to Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre and Alan Sage AJS Crafts The famous Ben Law, he of the home-grown house, also does courses. Ben Law Woodsman Don't forget to check out links from these sites. You're going to be in there for days.

Personally I would find the most gnarly hard splitting wood I could.

And the thickest! They'll probably only have 12" guidebars, so anything more than twice that, and they're stumped (pun not intended). Just ignore their look of dismay.

And nowhere near as bad as this one thats been doing the rounds

That looks like a screen capture. Got the video?

Just make sure you're done by the end of February, as that's when the nesting season starts. The birds can probably make do with losing that patch of greenery, so long as it's not the only one in the district.

You don't need any power tool, and shouldn't need to sand. I take it you are using a proper spoon knife? If this is properly sharp, it will burnish the inside curve of the spoon, leaving a smooth finish.

I reckon that if you need to ask, you'd best decline the job. Japanese Knotweed has very specific requirements for eradication, and I think the client is guilty of wishful thinking if they think that 'just cutting back' is going to have any effect whatsoever.

If it's JCB, you just drag the bucket on the ground if you want to stop.

I bet it's all about that boy who got killed by a falling beech. National Trust was eventually found not to have been liable, but they want to show that they can tick the box for "Have Done Something About It".

However, I fear that this will be one of those occasions where they will be able to tick the box, but won't have really addressed the problem.

Surprising though it may seem, brambles are sometimes easy to uproot in woodland. I once had the task of clearing bramble whilst trying to save the wild raspberry nearby, and was surprised not only at how much of the bramble root was in the leafmould layer, but also at how few bramble rootstocks there were relative to the area covered.

Some of them just pulled out without having to be dug. Finding somewhere to put the phenomenal quantity of unwieldy bramble stems was the hard bit.

Yur 'avin' a larf, aincha?

Ugly lump, and I bet it's full of rot. Where all those branch stumps are coming off, it'll be only the bark and sapwood holding it together.

Why do you think it had to come down in the first place?

My first thought is to cut out a section 30cm long from every ivy stem to deprive the top growth. But I suppose that in your case,you have multiple stems of both species inextricably intertwined, and for a long length of hedge this could be tedious, to say the least.

There probably a deeper reason as to why the ivy is swamping the hawthorn, as hawthorn is usually vigorous enough to stay on top. Factors could include the age of the hawthorn, shade, and what happened when the hedge was last laid, (if ever). If the hawthorn was pleached and laid without removing much ivy from the base of the hedge, this could have tipped the balance in the ivy's favour.

Why exactly do you need to?

There are a couple of good golden Catalpas in Swindon. One is at the top of Princes Street near the Wyvern Theatre; the other is in The Parade. Both in urban settings, though. An internet search has turned up one in Cambridge University Botanic Garden, which is closer to you anyway.

Treewolf, I couldn't have put it better myself. There is no way that a landowner can be responsible for removing all natural risks from the outdoors.

A tree that actually expressed body language in some way?

By the way, I looked it up on eBay, and the listing reads: "The Body Language of Trees: A Handbook for Failure Anal" so if that's how they're using their skills of expression, perhaps I don't want to know.

Dutch jays are gay??