Tuesday 31 March 2015

Clearing the way


When the site warden announced “The job this morning is rubbish!” she was perhaps not expecting volunteers to reply “Good!”

The volunteers being Green-Gymmers, however, that was exactly the response she got.  Ruthlessly clearing the work area of accumulated ‘bits which might come in handy one day, you never know’ – and transporting them to a heap from where they can be taken to landfill/recycling – proved to be an unconventional Green-Gym task which Green-Gymmers nevertheless flung themselves into with characteristic gusto:
Volunteer 1: “Would it be easier just to pick up the shed?”

Volunteer 2: “That looks useful!”
Volunteer 3: “By the time the day comes when that is useful,
you’d never be able to find it again underneath all this lot – throw it out!”

Site warden: “I feel a huge sense of relief”
As if to illustrate the point of the exercise, one of the tasks originally scheduled for today had been trailed as “path marking (special invented system)”.  That, however, required the 6”-nails, which were known to be in stock somewhere in the storage area, but could anyone find them when they were needed?  No!

For a while, then, we were left wondering what the ‘special invented system’ might be.  To me it sounded like something out of a fairy tale – marking a trail with small white stones, or leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, anyone?  (Not that I was much impressed by the story of Hänsel and Gretel when I was young.  Marking a route with breadcrumbs was never going to work!  Anyway, why did the children need to mark a path, which in most illustrated versions of the tale was so obvious in the first place?)

As the rubbish-clearers/archaeologists worked on, however, the bag of nails was re-located.  C was therefore inducted into the secret of the new woodland-route-marking system, which apparently was inspired by the 2012 Olympics mountain-bike course.  This was the prototype path-line roundel:


In the meantime, there were also some more conventional Green-Gym activities, namely trimming back vegetation from paths across the site …

and consumption of goodies, which I am told were distinctly moreish/Moorish:

(It turned that our colleague had not been in the Caribbean at all, but in the other Granada!)

After tea, a production and installation process was set up.  This was the craft table:

Here, the first line of roundels Mk 1 going in – Mk 2 is in the development phase:
“The R & D Department is on to it”

By session end, the work area had been transformed.  Here, for instance, the side of the shed is not only visible, but has been dug out with re-laid drainage system, plus cover to prevent any inquisitive small person coming to grief:





Tuesday 24 March 2015

Another sign of spring

Working in a Chilterns chalk-stream (yes: in it) is a much more enjoyable task when the sun is shining. 

Was the sun shining on us today?  Well, some of the time.  Did the drops of sunshine make the situation feel better for those volunteers (there did seem to be an awful lot of them this morning) who found themselves having to tip out the water from their wellies and wring out wet socks?  I do hope so.

The weather has been a tad contrary for the past week.  This, for example, was the ‘near-total’ solar eclipse, as viewed from South Oxfordshire, at maximum eclipse (c 09:30, 20 March 2015):

The cloud cover meant that all we human beings experienced here was a gradual shift from a light grey sky to dark grey, then back to light grey.  A couple of hours later, sun no longer obscured by the moon had burned off early-morning cloud.

Still, it was interesting that morning to observe birds in the garden going into preparing to roost mode, long before the human eye could detect any reduction in the level of light.  Here, sparrows helping themselves to their regular evening snack, at 9 in the morning:

An hour later they were going through their waking-up-and-getting-ready-for-the-day routine, for the second time that morning.  (I wonder if it registered at all in their bird brains that it had been a very short ‘night’?)

As for the sun’s performance today, well yet again we kept wondering, “Where did it go?”  One moment it was so warm, many of us were wondering if we had come over-dressed for Green Gym this morning.  The next, we were glad we had brought waterproofs – and not just because the work centred around a water-course.

Benson Brook, is a typical Chilterns chalk-stream.  At Ewelme it runs smooth, fast, and clear – as long as people keep the water channels free of obstruction.  Which used to happen in the normal course of events, when the watercress was harvested for commercial use. 

Today was the first of many sessions scheduled for keeping water channels clear by volunteer labour.  The Green-Gym calendar turning over to watercress-tending time is one of those markers of spring, alongside the more usual suspects:



For this first session of the season, the task was defined by site warden Tom as a general tidying up:
“Some watercress, some bramble, and various other unmentionables.” 

There were banks to be cleared – cut – slash –  lop – saw …

plants entirely obscuring some stretches of the stream, to be removed …

and some sections of the water itself to be dragged:

Note the chaps in the background hauling their ‘find’ ashore.  Here they are posing with some of their ‘treasures’:

One item of booty (formerly a nesting box for a Little Owl, later requisitioned by a squirrel, finally deposited by hands unknown into the stream, only to be hauled out again by Green Gym) was immediately recycled as furniture at tea-break:


All that clearance work also made, of course, for a lot of cut-stuff to be disposed of.  There were logs to be carried (for me to saw into smaller lengths) …

and waterlogged brash to be dragged to piles:


Not all the work was based in the stream.  Besides the log-sawing (which requires no artistry: hence delegated to C), there was also willow-fence restoration to be done.  That does require neat fingers:


For many of us, the session proved to be a harder work-out than we had been expecting.  However, the most difficult aspects of the work were working out how to get down to the stream-bed safely; and once there, how to stay reasonably dry:
“How do I get down there?”

Answer: “The old commando roll …” – or a helping hand

Wet clothing: a sign of devotion to duty

The results of our labours: another section of countryside looking as it should, all ready for the watercress-growing (and watercress-culling) season.