Busy

Didn't sleep well thinking about the impending UPS delivery (or non delivery).
While doing the morning horse & chicken work kept listening out for cars and at 10:15 was convinced I saw a UPS van drive past. Didn't get a good view but UPS vans are very distinctive and as rare as a polar bear around here. Quite normal that people looking for our house don't spot the entrance until they have passed but the van didn't reappear.
At 11:15, I contacted UPS per e-mail but had little hope. At 12:15 the UPS driver turned up. No he hadn't driven by earlier but yes he had just missed the entrance and had to turn around. Not sure but have to be nice and admit my doubts were unfounded.

Then waited for the normal post which comes around 1:00 and indeed did but the package which may have come was not there. Probably tomorrow as it left Holland on Monday afternoon.

Yesterday evening while preparing the horses boxes, saw a farmer from south of Ottobeuren drive by with his large Fendt Xylon 524 orange coloured tractor with hedgecutter arm. Not hedge as in England (we don't have hedges here), the cutter is like a one sided cutter head like a home hedgecutter but can cut branches up to 10cm dia. eg cutting back trees alongside roads. He does a lot of work for parish councils hence the orange colour as well as for other farmers, cutting back trees on the edge of fields. He did some work for us a few years ago when the county council complained about our trees hanging over the road. Two years ago, the county council came by with their machine and did it themselves free of charge.

I phoned him this morning and asked if he could halve our 50m long Thuja hedge which has not been trimmed for years and is now around 8-10m high. I don't generally like Thuja especially as it is poisonous for horses (they don't like it though anyway) however the hedge is a very thick screen and provides wonderful nesting for wild birds. I know his cutter is not suitable for trimming work but the branches were hitting the 10cm size. He wasn't sure if he would manage it as he would want to do it today before the rain came.

Luck on our side, he turned up at 17:00 shortly before it got dark and finished an hour later with a bank of spotlights trying to show him the way. Dreadful work, the Thuja resisted. Job will not look good tomorrow and I will have a bit of "improvement" work to do and trailer loads of branches to get rid of, but I would never have managed to do the job with normal equipment. As the farmer said, thuja belongs in the cemetry!

Angie came home late after a farewell party for a few colleagues at work. It was +23°C in Munich today! Not quite as warm here but I was very surprised how the tractor slipped around - the farmer said he had actually got bogged down in a field just before he came to us. The 4WD tractor weighs 10 tons and despite the dry period we have had, the ground is amazingly wet.

So Angie hasn't seen the massacre, thinking I had just cut the odd branch she saw on the house side. I suggested she go out with torch and have a look. She returned unconcerned. I asked if she had taken a torch - no, why? Tonight she will also get home in the dark so I can reckon on an explosion on Thursday morning!