Beating the bounds

The sunshine returned, and I've at last had a chance to walk around the 40 acres of grounds. Here's a photo showing the pond (low in biodiversity but with potential), the hermitage then community building on the left, the top of the Oratory and bell tower centre, various other buildings centre right and the kitchen garden wall on the right.

We have a mature oak to the north west, which has now been surrounded by tree planting; a stream on the north boundary lined with some existing hedging, willow, oak and other trees; some scrappy bits of hedge along the east boundary, and mature hedge along the south west. The hedging is mostly hawthorn, blackthorn, rose hip and bramble. More specimen trees - oak, chestnut - have already been planted along the south boundary, and there are plans for a lot more trees, not forgetting the orchard to be planted to the right of the kitchen garden / hermitage area. A lot of the tree planting is native woodland eventually for coppicing and ending up in the boiler. The orchard will I think be local varieties of apple, pear and plum.

Today we had our first office in the new Oratory - the first Vespers of All Saints, having moved the feast from Monday 1st to Sunday 7th. I took a photo from the gallery of the space below waiting in expectation, and I've uploaded more photos to a Facebook album. There's a good one of sunset over the Malverns.