Friday 30th March 18

Going over to Sheffield today, to see if I can give blood and resume my platelet donations, and then do some work in Anna's garden.

So I got to the station and bought my ticket to Sheffield and got an earlier train than I'd expected an arrived in Sheffield at about 11.30, and slowly made my way to the blood donor centre near the Cathedral, which I knew opened for the afternoon session at 12.30. I sat next to the Cathedral for 40 minutes watching the world go by and then walked my bike up to the Blood Donation place and waited there for a few minutes. A member of staff came along at 12.15 and I asked if she knew if they had any spaces for the afternoon session, and she said she'd ask. A minute later she came back and said they were completely full, so I thanked her and cycled up towards the University and Walkley.

Daddy had delivered the long ladder the previous day, using a sack barrow he'd tied it to as a convenient sort of trolley.  I untied this and leaned it up against the pear tree and started using my big Fiskars loppers to remove branches.

The pear tree was a variety called Jargonelle. We have one in the garden more than twice as tall as Anna's. The pears are quite small, between 4 and 10cm long, and ripen in the 3rd week of August, approx. They almost immediately go bad from the centre. They are an intense 'pear drop' flavour, and, traditionally, were used to provide the flavour for pear drops. If you search 'jargonelle', you will probably find a boiled sweet, named after the pear.  Our tree is very straggly and chaotic in character. Because there are many other pear trees nearby, we get excellent fruit set, but Anna's (last year) had a very poor fruit loading. It could have been a bad year, or it may be missing the two other varieties of pear nearby which it needs to pollinate with.

I am sad to take this 100 year old tree down (that's a guess) but, it's not nice or useful to the current custodians of the land, and they have bought a replacement tree, although it will never grow nearly as big.

The wood will be dried out and Daddy will use the logs in his woodburner, somewhat replacing fossil-fuel use as he doesn't need his heating on when the burner is going.  I was sad to take this tree down but if I didn't do it, someone else would have done. 

I took the tree down slowly and carefully, using a rope to tie some branches to the tree so they didn't fall dangerously.  Daddy turned up and helped me a little bit, using a long rope to pull some branches onto the lawn, away from the ladder and fence.  I used my Oregon battery chainsaw for the up-ladder cuts and then the Worx plug-in for the trunk.  I was able to get some little discs for Anne who wants to have them for some kind of place mat, and left the trunk in two large chunks for turning or carving.

Anna fed us well and I had a bath to get the sawdust out of my hair, and was in bed by 2am, early for me!