Ash dieback

Today Toad and I cut down two young ash trees and burned their foliage. They were diseased with the ash dieback fungus, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. They were not badly affected yet but the first signs were there and since they were growing in a wrong place anyway (under the tall cypress we I call "Scrawny"; Toad does not give trees names) and would have to come down sooner or later, the finding of the disease symptoms was a good time to do it.

We have not burned the trunks. They can be cut into lengths and burned in the stove over the winter. Ash doesn't need to season to burn well, as we found even with the small branches and green leaves,

though I did help the fire along with some of the rhododendron and snowberry twigs that I cut in spring last year. It went well even with the finest of fine mizzle in the air.

The yellow beyond the fire, in what was an area full of meadow buttercups, is now that of greater bird's-foot trefoil. As the buttercups lost their petals and began to make seed the trefoil flowers began to open so we have had weeks and weeks of yellow meadowy lawn down in this bottom part of the garden.