Rural Rant.

I have an issue with the councils in rural areas and their obsession with keeping things tidy. I get particularly revved up by hedgerows. I'm that kind of girl.

This is the time of year that the hedgerows lay on an "all you can eat" buffet. Haw berries, blackberries, rose hips, rowan berries - I won't go on. Nature provides a banquet for the birds and other hedge dwellers to see them through the winter. Everything from blackbirds, field fares, crows, hedgehogs, shrews, voles, partridge, thrushes, robins to small children looking for blackberries gets a look in. It is the ultimate free for all.

Now this kind of abundance isn't neat. It means big, rambling hedgerows that tumble all over the place showing their wares to any passing wildlife. The photo on the left is what these kind of hedges should look like around now.

Naturally, our revered councils can't abide such an uncontrolled glut and must stick their fingers into the pie. Their policy seems to be that they will wait until everything ripens before deciding that enough is enough and sending out the hedge cutters. They could wait just one more month for the berries to be eaten, but no, they want to make sure that nobody gets a look in at the feast. As you can see from the photo on the right, the hedge cutters decimate the entire harvest and leave nothing but bare twigs.

Then people wonder why there isn't as much wildlife as there used to be and councils get tough on planning, breathing and generally living in a rural area in case our presence impacts on the treasured wildlife, wildlife they have just robbed of their main means of survival through the winter.

Hedges used to be cut and laid in the winter, never in the autumn. Which office dwelling prat decided that September would be the better time to do the work and what did they base this decision on? Please tell me it wasn't neatness and making the countryside look well kempt for the tourists? Why oh why isn't somebody who understands the countryside put in charge of this kind of thing?