A Bonfire in the Orchard

30% and I spent much of our time in the orchard today. The weather is unseasonably cool, so our plan was to complete a task that would ward away the chills.

Our goal was to have a bonfire and deal with the large pile of stems and branches abandoned there after the Winter fruit tree pruning.  Over the past few months a dense mass of stinging nettles and docks had grown up through the pile and it was certainly overdue for clearance.

We have a metal cage about 5' in length, 4' wide and about 3' high. It is great for bonfires, but was already heaped his with weeds and other material from our gardening activities.

Phase 1 was to drag out branches from the nettle patch and cut them in to reasonable lengths. After about an hour we both had a couple of good sized piles, so I grabbed matches, a cardboard box filled with shredded paper and about an eggcup of heating oil ... Despite the wind I had the fire lit with a single match and 30% and I started to pile on dry wood.

We soon had a blazing fire, hot enough to burn the damp herbage previously piled in the burner along with the pruned wood.

Whilst we were working the dogs alerted us to a visitor at the gate. It was my adopted dad; Buzzer who had come to pay us a visit and invite us over for dinner on Saturday evening. We caught up on each other's news whilst drinking coffee and warming ourselves by the bonfire.

30% needed to head off to the Opticians in the early afternoon, so I piled the fire high with the last of the brush cut grasses from my orchard clearance last month and then attended to an odd hole in the orchard.

Now the orchard is far from an even piece of ground, but there is this weird hole about a foot deep and about three feet square. It is regular in shape and it looks like someone might have attempted to dig a very shallow pool at some point in the past. All I know is that it gets concealed by the rampant growth of grass and herbs and I fall in to the bloody thing on a regular basis.

We had some topsoil spare, so it has now been filled and I scattered some grass seed on it.

If you could see the rabbit hole ridden, rough patch that is our orchard, you might think that gallons of herbicide and a bulldozer would be a more appropriate tactic. You might be right, but I'm tempted to have a play with the new rotorvator and see if it is feasible to get parts of it levelled and grassed ... I can always hire a mini digger later if I need to.