• Wild Life Garden

    At Home, The Future

    As a woodworker it obviously makes a lot of sense that I love wood – its texture, figuring, infinite variety of subtle changes within the same species let alone between different trees, the varied challenges thrown up by environmental factors during growth, etc… However, does it make so much sense that I also love trees? Surely if I love trees I don’t want to see them chopped down? True, but they are not chopped down for me. In fact much of the wood I use comes from trees that will still be growing for a long time to come and I’ll blog about that in the future. What I wanted…

  • About Wales,  Background to wood and its history,  wood craft

    Laburnum in Ceredigion

    Laburnum hedges turn great swathes of this area yellow in May. Some roads become golden tunnels. Field after field are surrounded by branches dripping with Golden Chains. I don’t know that it is true but the story that I was told when I was young growing up in this area is that the Laburnum came here in the 1860s from Spain. It was used as ballast and was then used as cheap fencing posts. It took root. There are many hedges where the Laburnum trees are about 9′ (3m) apart which is just the right distance for fencing. Ceredigion was one of the last areas to be enclosed (the process…