Deadhedge Number Six

19th November, a Wednesday.

On the very next hill it is cloud-dark and raining; our cheeks and fingers are bright, pinched by the wind, our eyes are squinting through sunlight. A layer of leaf mulch begins to gather over the track, and under the heap of cut branches taken from the overgrown boundary. The old hedge is being laid in: it will grow up to make a living fence. What is discarded is of use as firewood, or whittling projects, or the construction of semi-tidy deadhedges. Today we are building the sixth of these- we are not sure how many we will have by the end of the hedging season but in the top field the plan is to cover the upper swell of the hill. This will make mini microclimates, shelterbelts for shrubs that will grow and make more shelter, and for our (hopefully) showboating canopy trees. They will make shelter for wildlife, (wrens and robins jump through the branches before they are even finished) they will add options to games of hide-and-seek: they will be running track markers, islands, grazing dinosaurs, focal points in our landscape even after they rot down into good soil and we grow flowers over them. 

Mr is in the old hedge, mulching up spindly fresh cut sycamore: we can add mulch banks to the deadhedges to suppress grass ready for planting, we can make paths with it, we can pile it up to rot down. 

We have Helper Nathan here; we have made pointed ends on the precut stakes and hammered them into place, now I am swinging the reciprocating saw through cut down branches of willow, hawthorn, holly, and hazel, slicing them into almost orderly heaps of twig clusters and chunkier boughs, while he does the drudging up and down to fetch them- but also the satisfying job of construction. His hedge, the sixth hedge, is the best one yet, the most compact. Two happy spaniels run around and around, and only after we have stopped to make mugs of strong hot coffee does the weather change. (And this is when Chief Helper Elias turns up, having been at work: good timing from him too!)

To be stood with chilled fingers on warming floral china, under an iron and orange sky: good work done, dogs playing: these are perks of perseverance. Here is work that will never be finished, much to our relief.