25th May 2019 The hedge from Hell!

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Saturday 51F, a grey, calm start. A walk to the lanes in light traffic and gorgeous, spring countryside. Nearly witnessed a classic head-on crash on a sharp corner.

The lazy driver on the inside of the corner let their car swing well over the double white lines on the exit. While the oncoming car on the outside was very typically cutting the corner by over a yard inside the double white lines.

A view between rough-cut, field hedges to the distant sea.

A shriek and scrub of tyres and they both continued on their way as if nothing had happened. The vast majority of drivers in Denmark treat every single corner exactly this way, despite the double white lines.

So one must assume that such road markings do not feature in the compulsory driving lessons required to obtain their "Joke Shop " driving licenses. I have seen driving instructors, when alone in the car and even some police cars behave just the same on corners. Buses, lorries, vans and motorcyclist all follow the same potentially lethal  pattern of behaviour.

The trees and hedgerows were full of birds and flowers again. Long swathes of poplar catkins were lying along the road like dirty slush in winter. I saw two hares resting, almost invisibly, in spray tracks in two roadside fields. The image shows the more distant one which held its ground long enough for a 'snap.'

Spent the day reducing our shared, 20' hedges by about six feet. None of our neighbours has ever shown any interest in helping to keep the boundary hedges under control. They are a mixture of Hawthorn and equally prickly plum trees which we call Blackthorn. By which I mean the hedge trees. Not the neighbours. We call them "The Woodentops" when we are being polite because of their chronic woodcutting fetish.

Our Blackthorns are not the usual sloes but produce small, sharp, yellow plums and have lots of long and really vicious, needle-sharp thorns. The tree trunks are very hard wood which resists even a brand new blade in a hand, bow saw. Only a chainsaw has the cutting power and stamina necessary to make much progress on the larger sections.

We inherited this hedge as mature trees which had been cut down to above head height prior to our purchase of our scruffy, detached, rural hovel. The Head Gardener has considerably thickened out the mass of The Hedge with new cuttings. While I have expended countless hours cutting back these same hedges to various heights over the years. A thankless task given its great depth and height.

I have always been denied my desire to cut the heavy trunks right down to the ground. To start again with THG's much slimmer and more manageable additions. Some of the multiple trunks have amalgamated into massive clumps nearly 3' in diameter. Their heavier branches fix the minimum depth of the hedge as it grows ever wider, higher and tattier. So I end another day literally aching all over from yet more hard exercise. It's not just using the loppers at arm's length but constantly moving the 15' ladders around. Just to reach the offending overgrowth.

Sunday 26th 51F, wet and windy with a heavy overcast. The official "seaweed grapplers" both claim rain and sunny periods. With rain on the windows, both front and back, there will be no early walk this morning. Late morning walk instead trying to capture all the wild Hawthorn flowers under a grey sky.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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