My trees were planted on the 14th April. As you might expect we were up to celebrate the same day.

This afternoon I spent some time out at the woods (for that is what I’m calling them now).

Clearly the local children have been playing on the land. That’s not a bad thing but it does pose a problem that I’ll need to resolve. I’ve lost 4 trees (at least, I have 4 tree-guards home with me), and while I don’t want to blame the children (it has been quite blowy recently) I did have to re-stake 5 trees after finding several canes in a tree-cum-den in the hedge.

I was out to collect litter - when we first visited the site it was obvious that people had been drinking and setting fires in the past. I spent my time today clearing up bottles and cans and other bits of rubbish. Hopefully I won’t have too much of that to do in future.

There’s still quite a lot of larger pieces that I hope to clear up this week.

The saplings have started growing, most of them are now in leaf. However, the grass is very long in some parts, so I’ll need to clear it to give them a chance to grow.

It also appears that there’s a watercourse running through the middle of the field. It’s very wet underfoot, even though there hasn’t been a lot of rain recently. I have tadpoles! I may look into creating a stream or a pond if it doesn’t dry up over the summer or as the trees bed in.