Collecting firewood from the garden

It's time to winter prune my fruit trees!  Today I gently pruned my Laxton Fortune apple;  it's a partial tip bearer, meaning it generally fruits at the tips of branches.  I only took off a couple little shoots which were growing in the wrong directions (away from the fence it's growing against) and tied down a couple of branches to make them more horizontal. 

The Spartan apple got a much harder prune, as I took off the top quarter which had outgrown the top of the fence.  I'm trying to keep these trees within my reach for ease of harvest, and it had grown quite a lot taller over the past year.  As it's a spur bearer, I also was able to nip off the ends of a couple of the long horizontal branches, and then a couple also got tied down.  While they're not truly espalier, I do keep these two apple trees confined to two dimensions as much as possible;  the harvest and care is very manageable and they are partially supported by the fence they're next to.

I cut the prunings into smaller pieces and collected them into a large cardboard box.  For good measure, I pruned a nearby rosebush and added those too, filling the box.  I put this box in my garage, where it will hopefully dry out over the next year to be ready as firewood.   After I'd done this, I finally bit the bullet and cut up Williams pear tree--you know, the one that blew down last year;  it's been lying in the back corner of the garden ever since.  I filled up another box with its branches cut small;  only the central trunk remains, which will need a saw rather than the loppers I used.

And hey, I've got one more box of already dried elder trimmings which the husband pruned last year.  Every elder in my garden is a weed, and I have plenty!  I keep trying to kill them by continually pruning out new shoots, but for the most part, they just keep growing back--luckily most of them are only small.  A couple were big trees by the time we cut them down, and remain as large trunks with lots of shoots;  these ones produce so much that I've been saving them for firewood too.  This lot of long, thin shoots came from such an elder, and have been lying on the edge of the driveway, where they've dried out perfectly;  I collected them, breaking them easily into smaller pieces.  That's three boxes in one day, one for now and two for later.