Tags
Cutting back my hedge (still haven’t finished) I discovered one of the hazel trees had eaten a rock.
It was so firmly wedged I couldn’t shift it, even when I whacked it hard with a hammer, my standard fall-back position when all things more ladylike have been tried.
I’ve seen trees eat other trees, barbed wire, bits of string and rubber tree ties (that was a crabapple in my terrace garden last week) – but never a rock before.
Aren’t plants amazing?
Sally Nex 
I inherited a pick axe when I moved here, that's my standard fall back now when all else has failed! Want to borrow it?!
Plants are amazing – in my last house I could not believe when daffs came up through the tarmac drive way!K
That's pretty impressive – and "hazel" sounds so dainty…
Su – yes please! I have multiple uses for pickaxes and extracting rocks from hazel trees is just one. Actually I also really want a mattock. Just because it's one of those tools that sounds fab, really, not because I need one.AG: Daffs? And they look so dainty! I love it when plants reclaim land for themselves: it reminds you we're not as all-powerful as we think we are.Plantaliscious – don't you believe it. My hazels are the toughest plant in the patch – in fact never mind the mattock, a machete may be a better purchase just to fight them back every year….
I had a tree felled recently and a rather miffed tree surgeon had all the cutting edges on his chain saw blunted. Right through the centre of the alder was a strand of barbed wire, totally invisible from the outside. Obviously years previously someone had wrapped or nailed 'wire to the trunk of the tree and the tree had then, slowly but surely grown around and absorbed it!And as to mattocks. I love my mattock! The only tool for getting out tree and shrub stumps and roots! There's not enough mattocking in the world, imho.