What up dudes,
So, full disclosure, I'm not working for the guy who took me on back in January any more. To cut a long story short, after he bought a MEWP I found myself climbing less and less (I didn't get my harness on for a period of a month), I wasn't learning anything new, and my boss was generally just being an arsehole, so we decided we should part company. As I've said on here before, I'm happy to do any job whatever the weather, but if I don't get on with the people I work with then you simply couldn't pay me enough to stick around. Life is too short to spend literally every hour of daylight with people who you don't like, and who don't like you in return.
No biggie, I've been taken on year-round as a groundskeeper, gardener, cook, and general help for a local stately home with a short visiting season in the summer for tourists. It's a fluid role with lots of scope for projects... they want to start keeping pigs and bees and ducks, create forest garden areas on the grounds, develop the neglected Victorian kitchen gardens into something much more, bring the derelict greenhouse setup back with a piped water heating system (nine greenhouses? Oh my!), and loads more. The owners seem like friendly, open, positive people, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be working in such a beautiful environment.
Now, if you guys don't mind, I'd like to ask you all for some help with bringing their fruit trees in the kitchen garden up to scratch. I'm going to be removing as much deadwood and damaged branches as I can and removing all the suckers from their bases next week, but some of them could do with a little bit more work than that. It's probably a bit late in the season already for a really agressive pruning, and over the summer I'll be getting a three-year-plan together for any of the trees that need it, but there's one tree in particular that I want to get working on as soon as possible. It's waking up a lot slower than the other trees in the garden, so I think I'll get away with it.
Here are some pictures:
We are looking at the poor thing on the right.
Photo taken whilst I was pulling ivy from the whole length of the wall, so I got to have a good look at all the trees in the place. This is the biggest, and definitely needs the most help compared to the others.
I was going to thin out as many of the vertical sprouts as I can in the upper canopy, get rid of any dead, damaged, or rubbing branches, and take let a bit more light and air throughout, but just how hard can I be, given how late it is in the season already? Apart from two dead trees on the opposite side of the garden which I'm going to replace at some point, this one is visibly further behind than everyone else, which is why I think I could still get something done on it.
Thanks for any advice, as always, dudes.