Hugging trees

St Marcellin

The pool is slowly filling up. J-J said he thought 2 cm per hour but I think it's more like one. We can't have the water on all night as our bedroom is right over the tap and it is very noisy water running through the pipes. We will have to ask Stephane to connect the water directly to the inlet again tomorrow and hopefully it will be full by tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, down on the ranch, we had friends over yesterday to help us clear some trees. They worked really hard but sadly couldn't take down my pet hate, the horse chestnut - it is too big, too close to the house and the pool and has to go. We will have to find a man with a proper tree harness to come and take it down slowly and carefully. First find your man!!

We did, however, manage to lose the remains of 8 pine trees that were next to the gate, all the old fruit trees which were only really suckers from some long defunct plums, the elderflower which was well over 6 metres high, and various other oaks and sycamores which had seeded themselves here and there. There is more work to do, especially coppicing clumps that have been grown for firewood and which are too high, but now that Jon has got confidence with the chainsaw we will be able to manage the rest ourselves.

All that remains is a hell of a lot of clearing up!

After the tree work we had a lovley relaxed evening meal here. All very convivial, now I wonder how they are feeling this morning with the aches and pains they no doubt gained from yesterday's work.