April has been such a dry month I have planted thousands of pounds worth of plants and they have all needed constant irrigation and the dust from the building site has had to be washed off every few days. I have endured a plague of  hares. I am reliably informed that every night about twelve to fourteen descend on the new woodland garden and dig little holes and nibble choice herbaceous leaves. Where the new woodland garden now grows there now appear grasses, docks, nettle and ground elder. I knew this was bound to happen but it is going to be a long summer weeding round all those plants on my knees, I need someone to breed educated hares to nibble certain leaves rather like an organic selective harebicide.

I don't mean to moan but my other woodland garden at the lodge is a pain at the moment. The trouble with having trees anywhere near a woodland garden is that they are constantly shedding twigs and downright branches all over the place. The worst offenders are ash and larch. It only takes the merest puff of wind for my paths and plants to be festooned with thin dry cone covered branches of larch and it drives me wild. Ash just shed whole branches, which is fine and dandy as long as they don't land on top of a young tree or choice hamamelis. I lost two lovely Malus 'John Downie' last winter, they were cut down in their prime.

On the hottest day in April I laid 230 square metres of turf in four hours all by myself without any help or hindrance. I was going to take two days and do it slowly but I got up such a head of steam that I just had to finish it all and get the sprinklers on before I went home. It was for two new lawns on the terrace on the south side of the tithe barn. I knew it was going to be a suntrap of a garden and I was right. I don't like turfing, especially with my lumbago but it is exciting to see it go down and to create a lawn where none has ever existed before. In one of the lawns I planted a Morus alba (white mulberry). It was ordered as a black mulberry (Morus nigra) and the thing arrived, fifteen feet tall with a huge rootball. I planted it by myself, with no help and it nearly killed me. Once it was in I noticed a small yellow label right at the top of the tree and managed to fish it down and read the bad news. The stupid thing is that I can actually tell the difference between a white and black mulberry, the former's branches are finer and upright and the latter are much stouter and zig zag about. Anyway I have ordered the black again and will plant it in a spot beyond the terrace wall. I was almost pathetically apologetic when I rang the nursery to tell them of their mistake why on earth didn't I tell them off properly and get it off my chest, I'm too kind.

Daisy the jack russell is still obsessed with the young rabbits under my sheds, She spends hours scratching and yelping. When they do eventually make a run for it she misses them my miles. She has had a nest or two recently so probably needs worming again. She is rather fat at the moment,  I put it down to bunny lunches. When we had farm cats we had no rabbits or hares near the gardens and now we have both I love hares but how do we rid ourselves of the other. Someone with a gun is going to have to play God soon.