I awoke this morning to the sound of chainsaws and the sound was much too close for comfort. An investigation revealed a pair of workers in the process of felling a lovely ash tree which grows at the bottom of my vegetable garden. Now we have known for some time that the owner of the land ,and indeed the cottage we live in was intending to apply for planning permission to build on this piece of ground. We have been prepared for the possible loss of the garden and orchard and have never disputed the owners right to apply for permission to build..
What we were not prepared for was his decision to fell the trees on the site in order to obtain that permission. You see his chances of being allowed to build will be much better if there are no trees on the site, this morning he attempted to make sure that there were none.
I quickly put on my dressing gown and a pair of Wellies and set off down the garden to remonstrate with the chainsaw gang, asking them if they had permission to fell the trees, they told me they had.....they lied.
As the law stands it is illegal to clear a site before planning permission is given ans when I pointed this out to them they became rather truculent but they did pack up and leave soon after. I returned to the house and immediately wrote to my landlord pointing out the error of his ways and then rang our local planning department to inform them of what had taken place.
If you are a regular reader of my blogs you will know that I am a member of a local group committed to the preservation of trees and wildlife habitat in our village and so the local council are already familiar with my activities. They were most interested in what I had to say and concluded, as I had that the trees were being felled so that when planning permission was applied for it could be said that there we no trees on then site thus making it much easier for permission to be gained.
I am expecting a visit from the land agent who acts for my landlord and I expect that he will be most seriously displeased. I suppose it could jeopardise our home and yet I can not sit idly by and watch the wanton destruction of these beautiful trees all for the sake of greed, my land lord is very seriously rich and does not need to behave in this way. The law Is the law as far as I am concerned and I will fight this no matter what.
I do wonder though what I must have looked like to those loggers this morning , flying down the orchard in my nightdress and dressing gown and with my long ,greying hair uncombed. I suspect that I must have resembled a harpie or one of the furies from a Greek tragedy. They certainly looked startled enough when I appeared. Pa and my son had a good laugh at me during breakfast.
I may not be very tall but a can be very scary when the occasion demands.
I have been given some beautiful raspberry canes today and I hope to plant them out soon ,raspberry jam is gorgeous and it will be good to have enough spare fruit to make some this year.
I do hope that if the men return that they do so a little later in the day, crusading in a dressing gown at this time of year and at my age is not my idea of fun.
Since writing my blog this afternoon I have received a call from the planning department to let me know that after a site visit by one of their officers they will be contacting my landlord requiring an explanation for his actions and instructing him that no further work is to be carried out without permission. Score one up to the dressing gowned crusader!
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