Coppicing and those chain saw trousers

Glorious cold day. Roads right skiddy with frozen runoff. Back down to the hazel grove, Dante’s dell, Heaney’s pocket, Yate’s place, McFarlane’s forgiving, the German bloke’s tree talking madness or call it what you will: The Tangle, The Twister, The Skyways Unpicker’s Puzzle.

Left on its own and crowded and overgrown by oak, by field maple, by willow and by mad unbridled competition the hazels have grown skyward, top heavy, intertwined and knitted with wild clematis and ivy.

You’d need an App called ‘Cutting Order for intergrown dead dying and vigorous hazel.’ You’d point it and it would algorithmate your master strokes, your select cuts. So that this one falls free of that one, all orderly on the ground for logging up and selecting out the straight runs and whippy bean poles.

Or you just slog on in the low sun cutting boles and stems using an abacus and luck.

But you’ll be wanting to see the chainsaw trousers, no?

You say I’m cutting the stumps too high? I shortened them later, sweeping them out to push the rain outside.

Worcester has a population of just over 100,000. Imagine it disappeared. A wasteland.