Our rental home is lovely. Truly a gem nestled in some trees and overlooking one of the many surrounding golf courses. When you open the front door, you see right through the house to the back garden and the golf course fairway expanse. Sitting in the conservatory or working in the kitchen, you have that gorgeous view. It is probably why we rented this house as other parts of it are less than stellar but we love the place and have been very thankful to live here and have a good landlord as well who is tolerant of my messing around in the garden and hanging many pictures on the walls (yes, I always do that but I always repair the walls when I leave!)
So last year, we noticed that our view was becoming a bit obstructed. There has been growth! Nature happened! Trees get taller, shrubs get bushier, ferns shoot up. Basically, nature is obstructing our view of the golf course. We love looking out there because there are no houses in the way. We see many birds and sometimes deer, and the golfers comprise some of the most interesting wildlife to hit the fairways.
There are about 12 branches that have grown over the years and are right in the middle of our view. I noticed that with the leaves gone, it's not so bad. I have 12 sticks in my view but it is easy to look around them and watch the flora and fauna that parades past our house. But come spring and summer, that is going to change and our view will again be blocked by these twelve rather leafy branches. So I determined that action must be taken.
I am fairly sure that the property upon which these branches sit is part of our house lot. I'd heard this from our neighbors but honestly I'm not totally positive as I have seen the golf course gardeners plow into these small sections of woods when the trees and such seem to be overtaking the greens. We determined that we needed to cut down the offending branches and we have the tools to do so but the timing needed to be right. I think that meant we needed to do it when no golfers would be out and about. Didn't want to disturb someone's putt with the sudden abrasive sound of a mini chain saw. We also determined that we needed to do this now, before the trees started putting out leaves and flowering for spring. I think it's better for them to be pruned in the winter - or at least that was the understanding I had from my gardener.
So we set out to trim our branches. Because of the golfers, we waited until very late in the afternoon to do it, so we wouldn't bother them. And because it's still winter, we ended up trimming them in the dark! By torchlight! It felt very stealthy to me, like we were being sneaky and underhanded to do this but it was still very important to us to do it to get our view back. We had to push our way into the holly bushes - which wasn't pleasant. Finally, we are close enough to barely reach the offending branches if I shoved as hard as I could against the prickly holly and reached as high as I could. I was just able to lop off each of the 12 branches but it wasn't a pretty job. some of them were rather chewed before they dropped. I am thinking this is also why those 12 branches managed to sprout upwards when everything around them was trimmed. They were just too hard to reach.
But we did it! Our view is back. And I am out of the holly with not too many scratches and scraps. I only hope we cut them enough that we don't have to do a repeat performance next winter.
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