All Things Willow

By ‘C’:

‘Green engineering’ was on the menu today; aka bankside-stabilisation works beside the River Thames.

Some of us [she means herself – Ed.] had a little difficulty understanding a few of the instructions sent out ahead of the session.  The caveat that we would be working at Riverside Meadow “if all goes to plan, and we don’t have a sudden large amount of rain that raises the river!” was clear enough.  There was in fact sustained rainfall over the weekend, and even a little snow, in addition to gusty winds which had brought down the odd tree on the other side of the village:

This morning, however, the site where we were to work, was accessible – at least to people, shod in wellington boots.  Our RV point lived up to its billing as being off what is known locally as Watery Lane:

As for the meadow itself, as per our advance briefing, it was “pretty muddy down there”:

(Photographs above taken yesterday during a spell in which the weather was more camera-friendly than had been forecast for today.)

The general outline of the work required was also quite clear: adding bundles of willow on to the larger of two areas we had worked on before.  Loose willow would be supplied from that coppiced by ourselves on a previous occasion, at a different site (21 Nov 2017).  Timber, for uprights to secure the bundles in place, would also be supplied, but each post would need trimming to a reasonably sharp point.

It was when the advance briefing got down to fine detail that (probably ‘thanks’ to Spellchecker) rogue elements crept in.  Some, such as the promise of “steaks” instead of ‘stakes’ (Mmm … steak) are unlikely to have confused anyone with two oars in the water.  [But we all have our dreams – Ed.]  Others, such as “bill hocks” for ‘billhooks’, had a certain surreal quality to them.  Images came to mind of penniless volunteers pawning tools not required that day.

One autocorrect-fail had me completely baffled.  ‘Billhooks’ to put points on stakes, I get.  ‘Axes’ likewise.  But “Sara to sharpen stakes”?  OK, I admit it: I was a few fries short of a Happy Meal at the time.  I was dependent on a colleague pointing out that ‘r’ and ‘a’ are close to ‘w’ and ‘s’ on a QWERTY keyboard.

So, equipped – according to personal preference – with billhooks, axes, and saws ‘green engineers’ set to work.  The plan had been to drive landie + trailer-load of materials down to the river bank, but it seemed better on the day to leave the vehicle on the firmer ground of the upper meadow, near the mouth of Watery Lane.  [Which my own spellchecker has just tried to amend to ‘Water Lane’. – Ed.]

As much of the work as possible was carried out on the upper part of the meadow, where the ground was less soggy.  This meant unloading the trailer of the consignment of coppiced willow …

then fashioning most of the rods into bundles (secured with biodegradable string), and transporting them to the area of riverbank which is to be built up.  Transport by hands of volunteers, that is: not the coal train.

(What the photographs do not show clearly, is the lifesaving equipment stowed during the session on the rails; and the care taken with moving about the site, and making sure no-one was left on their own in a situation where they might have got into difficulties.)

By session end, we had a trailer emptied of brash.  So it was time to load back into the trailer the wheelbarrows we had not used (except for one experimental run: not repeated) plus the sharpened stakes (which will be sunk into place at a later date), and the odd bit of rubbish found on site:

And the woodchips from pointing the stakes?  Those went for path-surfacing:

So today was ‘green engineering’ in several respects, including recycling and re-using as many materials as possible.  It will be even greener if some of the willow laid in place by the river, sprouts.  As it probably will.