Old Fruit

This is where I got about 90mins rain-free time this morning, digging out the fruit bushes. This is where I dug out the edging, you can just about see the excavation just to the right of the centre there. And those yellow alien like roots are nettle roots. I believe you can make a tea from it, which is said to be good for your prostate or something but there's no way, I've battled with so many of these yellow tangles that I'm sick of them, and want nothing more to do with them beyond putting them on a fire.

You might think digging out fruit bushes is a simple task: dig around it, and then up it comes? No. Not these ones. I've worked out what's happened. Each year the bushes and the cherry trees' leaves have fallen, lain there, and turned to leaf mould. Over many years, the bushes have gotten buried. Their lateral shoots have grown roots and thrown up new bushes. Nettles and bushes have been in combat for rootspace beneath the ground. Brambles have entered the picture.

All-in-all this has led to a mounting bank of extremely good soil (because of the leaf mould) being home to a bewildering network of woody roots. You can see the cherry trees there too. The bank of earth is highest around them. I suspect these trees are actually shoots from a coppiced cherry beneath the leaf mould earth. Which probably means shoots from the rootstock, so a wild cherry. Which is fine for a hedgerow.  I've just trimmed them for now, coppicing will follow when I get a better saw.

All of this high quality soil is going West soon. Spent a lot of time looking at the levels today, (the waters have receded somewhat), and planning the extent of the pond.

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