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Fence project

28/4/2020

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Spring is just the best time of the year but this year has been a most unusual year as we have been seriously affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. We are now in week four of the 'lockdown' which means unless we are a key worker we have to stay in our homes and only go out to buy food. My family have insisted that I stay put so I have tried to keep busy with substantial garden projects the biggest of which is trying to breath new life into the paddock. It all started in February when a man in yellow overalls knocked on the door and told us that the back fence alongside the railway was going to be replaced. Well that made me quite happy as it was badly in need of repair. Even better the man in the yellow suit told me that his men would clearall the scrub that had grown over the fence sometimes up to 5 metres into the field. A few days later two men came and spent three days clearing the fenceline while I cleared and burnt the cuttings. I was really pleased with the new fence and the reclaimed field although I knew that it would keep out the deer which we loved to watch. This act made me want to do more so I chopped down the saplings that had grown in the field and spent several days cutting the grass and the big patches of brambles that had taken over.  So that was stage 1 of my rehabilitation project.
I have put off repairing the wooden fence that runs along the woods for several years. It was quite dilapidated and broken in several places. It was a good lockdown project so in April I ordered wood and salvaged some posts from another fence and  began to repair it. It took about a week but again I was pleased with the results and castigated myself for not doing it sooner. As I was repairing the fence it occurred to me that the deer which visit us ever year would have a hard time getting into the woods so I decided to leave a panel so they could get into the woods. I then saw the value in making a proper path into the woods and in this way I felt I had made a small contribution to the value of this place.
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Wild flowers in the woods

15/4/2020

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We have been blessed with some fantastic weather during the last 3 or 4 weeks and had beautiful blossom on the trees and an abundance of wild flowers. I decided to make a movie of the wild flowers in the woods as a birthday gift for one of my daughters. I have yet to identify them all but they are truly wonderful to look at.
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    Garden & Beyond Notes
    My garden keeps me busy and gives me the exercise I need to keep fit, although it does damage me from time to time. But more than anything else it gives me pleasure, happiness and a sense of belonging and of doing something useful and worthwhile. It enables me to express myself creatively and draws my attention to the beauty and ecology of life. In this blog  I am telling the story of my garden and my involvement and experiences in it through my writing and the photos, movies, music, paintings and other artefacts - it inspires me to create. I have become more conscious of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and our important role in enabling their achievement my experiments and projects in the natural world show how I respect and try to understand nature and try to enable life to flourish. I know that one day I will not be the custodian of this beautiful landscape we call our home. I must make the most of it now and preserve its presence in my memory knowing that it will carry on long after I am gone and that someone else will care for it and call it their home.
    In March 2022 I joined a group of environmental activists in my village and so I have decided to expand my blog to take in the natural environment of which my garden is a part.

    Picture
    Useful Links
    RE Betchworth
    Wildlife Garden Forum
    Surrey Wildlife Trust 
    Habitat Network
    Plant Identification UK
    ​GAIA
    ​
    GOOGLE EARTH
    ​




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