Removing the Mistletoe
It was the first day back after the Christmas & New Year break and a gentle start to the year with some pruning of the young apple trees in the New Orchard. However the older apple trees looked more like mistletoe trees and it was time to cut away the parasitic growth.
I should have taken a photograph of the tree before we started to show the before and after, however from the pictures above you can see just how much there was to come down and at this point there was still much more to remove. Midway through the task we were told of the superstition about burying a silver coin at the base of the tree where mistletoe was being removed in order to avoid a year of bad luck. Not wishing to tempt providence a quick whip round to find a silver coin and it was buried. I now wonder if the instigator of this story owns a metal detector?
