Killing the trees?

I am suffering a bit of back ache today, brought on partly by my advancing years but mainly by the fact that I spent most of yesterday pulling up birch and willow saplings from a wild flower meadow at Otley Wetlands nature reserve, picture below. It often seems strange that much conservation work involves pulling up or cutting down. The reality is that to maintain a diversity of habitats you need to stop invasive species taking over. This is the second year I have been involved in this task and am looking forward to visiting in the summer and seeing the orchids and other species which inhabit the reserve.


Continuing today's flowery theme, I planted some bulbs in my tiny garden back in October, and I am pretty excited to relate that they have started to come up. I am hoping for a riot of Spring colours in a few weeks.