Fruit trees munched by hare

Last weekend we had no time to do anything, but panicking about the trees sitting in tubs of water, I decided to heel them into one of the veg beds already dug over. This morning we woke to frost, great!. This means a rain free day to get the rest of the hedge in. Hubby not impressed as he had plans to watch some blokes on the telly kicking a ball about, I think not!

I wandered up to the check on the trees and some creature has been having a right old munch on my apple trees. I suspect it is a hare, as we have seen one on occasion in the garden. I know deer do this sort of damage but I have not seen one around.  One of the trees is quite badly damaged, the rest should survive. I am going to get some tree guards for them, however in the meantime I have wrapped some garden fleece around the trunks, as a temporary measure. One of the hornbeam had been sliced in half, but the rest were left, maybe the creature did not like the taste.

Anyway we managed to plant the rest of the hornbeam hedge, forty metres in all.  The soil was quite wet still, with one patch particularly bad. We have wet area of ground stretching half the length of the garden and heading east to west. The amount of rain this winter has really left it sodden. The wind mesh has arrived, so if the weather hold we will get some of this fixed onto the existing wire fencing tomorrow, and make a start on getting the fruit trees planted.