A lot of things seemed to go well. Research: I had plenty of time during the winter to do reading & to learn much more about the plants & techniques that I was going to use when I started implementing my design in the Spring. It was a very exciting period & I spent days at a time hungrily devouring new ideas & plant information. Planting trees: I always enjoy planting trees, there is something incredibly satisfying & healing about the exercise. Having so many to plant was wonderful; I had only ever planted a few at a time before. The number involved did give me slight concerns about whether I would get them all into the ground on time as most were barerooted trees, but it only spurred me on to spend more time enjoying myself.

 Living house: Putting up the Hazel frame & planting Willow around it was very exciting. It was a totally new experience for me, but I planned out how I was going to do it & it all went very smoothly. I was able to bend the framework into the shape that I wanted easily in most places (there was one slightly tricky section) & planting & weaving the wands was straightforward too. Rooting cuttings: Being able to stick cuttings of plants like Currants, Willows & Fuschia (which grows as a large hardy hedge in that part of Eire) directly into the ground & having a lot of them rooting as a result was a great discovery. It was a very quick & easy way for us to propagate our plants all over the land (the original Blackcurrants had grown from prunings from a 'neighbour', treated similarly a few years previously).
 

 Wet ground: While I was prepared for planting up the marshy area to the west side of the site, I hadn't planned for the East side to be quite so wet as well. It was however springtime & probably the wettest months of the year, so what did I expect? I managed to find some dry humps around the orchard, into which I planted many of the fruit trees, but they weren't always where I wanted them to be & maybe in not enough number either. There I was with the land & the trees & not enough dry places to plant them! Windy aspect: The site was quite a windy one & while I could plant windbreaks, they were going to take some time to grow enough to be effective. The lower part of the site was sheltered by the cottage & the surrounding trees, but further up I was going to be limited to what I could grow until some of the pioneers had grown up a bit.

 Limited resources: As I have already mentioned, we didn't have a lot to work with & I had concerns about losing trees & not being able to afford to replace them. The simple hand tools were perfectly adequate, but not always particularly sharp & it could make progress rather slow at times. Tree protection: Having to cut so many rushes to bundle around each tree made the job so much more time consuming. I also had to ensure that while they provided a protective barrier, they were well enough tied on to not fall off, but not so tight as to cause the tree bark to rot.
 

 More time: Having more time to spend on site observation (i.e. the whole year) would have avoided me coming up against difficulties such as the wet ground I wasn't expecting on the East side. Spending more time there would have enabled me to give the garden a chance to get established. Leaving so early on in it's development meant that I wasn't around to keep an eye on protective measures (like the home-made tree guards) & to take quick remedial action should it have become necessary. Sweet chestnuts: These trees in particular seemed to be struggling with the wet conditions & I fear that they didn't make it. Despite planting them in one of the driest spots on the site, they still appeared to suffer with the rainfall, or maybe it was the wind? Perhaps they just needed to be in a different part of the land.