Portrait of the Blipper...

...as a foreshortened, behatted shadow on a hazel hurdle fence.

I went into work today to plant some trees that arrived bare-rooted yesterday.

I don't normally work on Saturday, and it was actually quite nice to not have to think about what everybody else should be doing and just get on with the job in hand.

The soil at Archerfield, East Lothian, is truly awful. It is technically a humus-deficient sand/silt loam. This means that it doesn't hold nutrients and has a tendency to collapse into a solid cake when walked on, especially when wet. To remedy this we plant trees in over-large holes, into which we put a 50/50 mix of soil and compost, with the addition of several handfuls of slow-release fertiliser.

So today I planted three different varieties of Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia and S. commixta), a type of birch (Betula alba-sinensis) and a flowering cherry (Prunus 'Accolade'). I also planted a few species roses and a couple of Small witch hazels. The trees were hard work because of the amount of soil to be dug-out then mixed and replaced, but it is beginning to look like a garden (at last)

Photos to feature soon!