We’ve been working hard today, backbreaking stuff that makes you shake for ages after you’ve finished. My tremble was so bad I found it difficult to pick up my sarnie at lunchtime.

Anyway, what we’re doing is connected to the grand plan – we’re clearing our field so that this autumn we can plant our fuel trees. We’ve decided on three distinct and separate areas – a part for our little wood, a part for playing ball with Rosie and a part for wild flowers so that we keep our wildlife happy.

We’ve hacked and hacked at grasses, weeds, brambles, trees and anthills and now we have around a third of our area cut back so that we can give it the necessary tlc before the autumn planting.

We reckon the field has not been touched by human hands (or indeed animals) for many years now, although we have been told that a long time ago, a previous owner of our house let the field out to a local farmer for grazing. We tried to get someone to put animals in to graze it for us but to no avail so we decided drastic action would need to be taken if we wanted to get on and do our planting this autumn.

It’s been something of a worry though because we’ve been disturbing so many critters as we’ve worked and we’ve also noticed that one of the weeds that’s seeding profusely in there is clearly a favourite of the local goldfinch population, judging by the numbers we've seen coming and going as we've worked.

This means we need to take great care not to destroy habitat while we put the next step of the plan into place, though to be honest, we’re surrounded by miles of open space which has all of the same plants as we’ve got in abundance so we needn’t be slavish about it but we still want to make sure the goldfinches and all of the other birds and animals find food here as they always have done.

We will put in hedgehog nesting places, bat boxes, bird and bee nests while we’re doing the work to be sure that our little critters know they’re still welcome here.

Now we need to do our homework. We need to work out how many trees we need, what varieties to plant and how to protect them from wabbits. I have a thing about lost varieties of fruit trees so I’m planning to sneak in a few of them even though DM thinks we should only grow the best stuff for burning.

Anyway, while we’ve worked, I’ve been struck by the sheer beauty of the most simple and abundant plants. This grass is one of a few varieties that grow in the field. I reckon it’s as lovely as any cultivated plant, yet it is, of course, completely wild and very pink for green grass!

I was shooting insect eggs last year.