It may sound glamorous, but lifting crowns has nothing to do with royalty. We spent the last week removing the lower branches on trees in various parts of Edinburgh.
Lots of trees were planted for the millennium, and they are now big enough to need a bit of attention. Unfortunately it’s difficult to get between them, so we have been learning how to cut lower branches off trees with minimal impact on the trees, and helping to clear out the undergrowth between them.
On Tuesday we were up on the Pentlands, in a car park miles from anywhere. On the way we got caught behind a herd of cows being moved to a new field a few kilometres down the road. It really made a mess of our nice clean van… As the car park is so isolated people seem to like dumping things there, so we cut back the vegetation to make it visible from the road and hopefully discourage them. It rained quite heavily in the morning, so we had a bit of trouble starting a fire to burn the branches, but we persisted and had roaring flames by the early afternoon so we could sit and appreciate our hard work. We’ll be going back there in a couple of weeks to finish trimming and unblock a drain.
On Wednesday we were out at the Hermitage of Braid doing a similar task to make a bridge clearer, and on Thursday we were at a school in Duddingston helping with their trees. It’s amazing how much you can get cleared with so many people, and last week our minibus was overflowing. We had to ask several people to make their own ways to the sites, as the good weather seems to have brought more people out with us.
Sadly this is Leticia’s last week with us as she is going back to Spain next week. It’s been wonderful working with her, and I hope she enjoyed her time here. We will have a new Spanish VO, Fatima, starting with us in two weeks time.