I’m a Lumberjack

It’s that time of year again, when the tree in our back garden needs a serious pruning. We originally planted some sort of decorative cherry tree when we moved here 17 years ago, but after a couple of years it died off and whatever the root stock was started flourishing. Obviously some sort of fruit tree, it continued to enjoy rampant growth until a few years ago when we got fed up with clearing up the sticky fruit that fell off each autumn, and decided to chop it down. Rather than take it all the way back we left the main trunk and a couple of branches to hang bird feeders from.
The following spring, we were amazed to see new branches shooting skyward from what we thought was a dead stump and this has happened each year since. The bit on the left shows how high it gets in one season and the bit on the right is where I’ve started cutting back. For comparison, if you look at my blip of 31st May you can see what it looks like only a few weeks after starting to sprout in the spring.
With the last cut of the lawn pencilled in for tomorrow, I think we can safely say that as far as nature is concerned, autumn is well underway and winter cannot be far behind.