There’s a big (sycamore?) tree at the bottom of the garden which overhangs Barry’s office.  A blustery night just after we’d moved in sent a huge branch straight down over the fence that separates us from the church and we didn’t want the same to happen with the one directly over Barry’s head.

My brother has a rope access company which tends to deal with industrial jobs (building signage, cleaning at height, that kind of thing), but he took some time out of his busy schedule to get rid of this branch.

There was a lot of rope set up time and tying stuff up (I have no idea what he was doing), but this is is him getting the job done…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlUbluKjG28]

In addition to that branch being cleared, we previously had a fir tree, flower bed and pond in the first section of the garden (to the left here).

Barry’s been working to clear these so that it’s ready for turfing, as a pond’s too dangerous for us to have with very young children, and we didn’t feel that the flower bed added anything to the grass there.  We’d rather just have a bit larger patch of lawn for the kids to play there. We’re keeping Sleepy Hollow and the lavender around it though (although we’re trying to get rid of the biting ants in there – ouch!).

Here are a few work in progress photos of the clearing of this area.  Barry’s chopped the tree down, but we still have the stump to clear and then we can get turf down.