Olive, Tom, John and myself spent a fruitful hour or so this morning digging out the young willows. We marked out squares using bamboo and maintaining a 2m safe distance worked in pairs to clear these areas of willows.

We started with some trepidation as the ground is so hard. But after marking up two square areas we got stuck into the work and the willows, having surprisingly small roots, came up fairly easy with minimal digging.

And after an hour or so we had quite a haul of young willows ready to go to the green waste area of the Shannon Recycling Centre. A good job all round!