Trimming The Laurier Sauce

We have a big bay laurel tree in the back corner of our yard. It's called laurier sauce in French, which means that it's edible bay leaves. The big hedge is another variety of laurier, but not edible.

The bay laurel tree before I started trimming.

So we have an endless supply of the most tasty bay leaves I've ever had. We save a good amount of the trimmings each year and dry some for cooking. The rest all get burned. What a shame, because the value of these leaves in the supermarket (especially in the US) is incredible; they are so expensive. And we burn most of ours.

Ken took this one. You can see that the tree is about 3 Walts tall.

All that notwithstanding, I still have to trim the tree each year. And it's big. I actually bought a new ladder a few years ago to help me get to the high parts, but it turns out it's not quite big enough. I spent a couple hours on Thursday teetering up on the ladder trimming this tree. I used my hedge trimmer, of course, but also a pair of loppers for the thicker branches.

Bay laurel with a mohawk!

The most difficult part, other than the top, is a result of the tree's position inside the angle of the larger hedge. I have a real hard time getting the ladder in there to get to the upper branches. It's a real pain to maneuver back there. I don't know how they did it before. I always think that I should just cut the tree down about five feet, but I never end up doing it.

Almost done. I was tired and decided I shouldn't be on the ladder any more.