Tuesday 10th November 09

A better, smoother start to the morning, and I was able to get to my 10am appointment with Ann up the road, who asked me last week if I was able to help her with a pile of partly cut down apple tree logs. So I took my electric chainsaw there and she took me to see her 91 year old Mother's garden, next door but one, where some wide-boys had partly taken down the tree, been paid, had problems with their chainsaw, and disappeared. Without finishing the job.

So, John to the rescue. I chopped up the big logs from this once splendid 100 year old + Bramley, which they had cut down as they couldn't use the apples and the fallen apples and autumn leaves were 'untidy'. I think that this is almost criminal, but it was done, there was little point bemoaning it's loss. The whole garden had been covered in gravel and it was so ugly.

The job was bigger than I thought and I spent two hours helping them, for no payment, just the logs, which should be about 10 cycle trailer loads full. Glad it's nearby.

Back for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon wooding, chopping existing logs in the front garden, splitting them, and stacking some by the side of the house where I removed the stacks when the work was done last week. I didn't bring any more from up the road as I haven't space.

Later I popped down to Country Fresh to get potatoes, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms and onions. Came back with what I went for plus two sacks of 'resources'.

Gill was feeling poorly so I made tea... pasta and veg with tomato and onion sauce, really simple but both boys asked for more, so it was well received.

I spent some of the evening doing yet more of the huge pile of persimmons... I've only about 20 or 30 left now, but they dry quickly and are really nice when dried.

Late on I had a good conversation on facebook chat with Sabine in Germany. So a good day in many ways, despite my feelings of anger about such a big old productive tree being chopped down for no good reason that I could understand...