Hedge Cutting Has Begun...

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....and the ivy in the hedges isn’t in flower yet😡👹💩💩💩👹😡
Very annoying ... fortunately here most of the Ivy is not in the hedgerows ... there's lots of it but it tends to be on garden fences, climbing up trees and on walls ... not that there's much chance of our council cutting hedges anyway ! Still a week or so away from blooming though ... just as well ..chilly and windy today only the hardiest bees flying.
 
My apiary is surrounded by a Hornbeam hedge that I planted 30 years ago. It is totally bomb proof!
certainly puts the brakes on the wind . I trim it First week in June and again, first week in September.
anything more drastic has to wait until Winter as like the grape, it bleeds and could suffer from die back .
these two trimmings keep it thick , plus the September one causes a growth of leaves which copper beech like , manages to stay on over Winter!
 
Ivy in flower for the last couple of weeks around here. Unfortunately farmers are under their own time pressures which may not coincide with all our needs - I’m sure as already said, they’ll be plenty elsewhere I’m sure.
 
When I were but a lad my father used to cut the hawthorn hedge surrounding our plot by hand last week in July. Rarely any birds nests found but if any were active that bit of hedge was left for a few weeks. He reckoned cutting it before then the hedge would grow again and need a second cut for that year. It worked out to be a week before the local agriculture show.
 
A lot of the farmers are leaving theirs here and some are cutting every three years. I have often wondered at the need to barber the hedge to its bones every year if you have a stock fence each side
 
My apiary is surrounded by a Hornbeam hedge that I planted 30 years ago. It is totally bomb proof!
certainly puts the brakes on the wind . I trim it First week in June and again, first week in September.
anything more drastic has to wait until Winter as like the grape, it bleeds and could suffer from die back .
these two trimmings keep it thick , plus the September one causes a growth of leaves which copper beech like , manages to stay on over Winter!
I looked after a twenty acre wood a while ago, when landscaping and wood-management was my work. There were hornbeam trees running through part of it, that looked like a hedge-line. I could see where it had once been cut & laid a great many years ago. There were deep pits, in one part of the wood, left over from clay digging I gather. I think that the 'hedge' had been utilised, or created, to prevent cattle and maybe humans from straying into danger. I have never seen such ancient hornbeam as these. They were so mysterious and totally beautiful! :love:
 
They started round here three weeks ago. I always mourn the loss of sloes and blackberries.
War on blackberries here. They were introduced from the UK in the 1800's, but terrific for honeybees. Taste nice too, no doubt packed with vitamin C and E.

Hawthorn hedges planted in the early days of the colony, are sometimes removed to make way for centre pivots.

My wife photographed this one recently with the beautiful red berries on show and the new leaves bursting out.
 

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