When September Ends

Summer having come, but not yet passed here, it has been an exceptionally dry September.  This v good from PoV countryside labourers.

For where site wardens have shaved the ground with their brush cutters, workers tooled up with fork and rake have to come after and remove all that spent vegetation.  They look ever so much happier during the briefing if they know the cuttings will be dry, therefore lighter to handle. 

Part of today’s task was raking again: this time not dead wildflowers from a water-meadow, but dead reeds from an Anglo-Saxon drainage ditch.  Fortunately, across the UK it has been the driest September since the Met Office started keeping rainfall records in 1910.  There did not appear to be any Green-Gymmers thinking, either literally or metaphorically, “Wake me up when September ends” as they rounded up reluctant reeds, and moved them to the compost heap:

Some volunteers opted for transporting by tarpaulin.  Others, myself included, preferred to persist with pitchforks, despite the reluctance of reeds to allow themselves to be intertwined into a bundle which may be easily picked up.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the public footpath, there was a more modern channel to be dug out, where it had become overgrown and silted up:

Before

After

Thankfully, this is only an annual maintenance job.  That it makes for a hard work-out, I can testify from having switched position from pitchforker to shoveler for the last leg of the morning’s session, to ensure the job got finished. 

The only complaint I heard during the morning was the heat of the sun on the back of the neck.  IMHO that is a nice problem to have.  Certainly preferable to cold rain trickling down the inside of one’s collar!  Depending on one’s viewpoint, also preferable to being stuck indoors and not able to enjoy the feel of sunshine on skin at all.

‘Dancing in September'

If not dancing in the night, certainly autumnal fun-exercise, in a water meadow beside the Thames this morning.

Never was a cloudy day, as they say, as Green Gym gathered for our part in the annual raking-after-the-meadow-cut:

Our work-party was all part of the scenery for people passing by on the Thames.  The boat in the background of the pic: one of the c 25,000 licensed craft on the non-tidal part of the Thames.  Trains rushing by over the nearby bridge served as an intermittent reminder that it was the advent of the ‘iron horse’ which transformed the Thames into a river for recreational use/organized chaos.  – For me personally the scene reminded me of the pleasant surprise I had recently had on holiday, coming across the original of Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon (Edward John Gregory, 1897) in the Lady Lever art gallery.  I recall, from Asst-Lock-Keeper training, that the scene had been reconstructed for the centenary of the picture.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate a photographic record of that occasion.

To return to Green-Gym matters, the task was the very serious one of removing the cut material from what is now flourishing as a wildflower meadow (8 new species of flowers identified in the most recent survey).  So, where site-staff had gone ahead with the Stihl machinery, volunteers laboured, with rake and pitchfork, to create vast piles of cuttings, which had to be trampled down for more loads to be deposited:

“While the volunteers did all the hard work, C was just having fun on the trampoline”

That it was hard work for those at ground level, was evidenced by this exchange, some time after 11 o'clock:

Hopeful volunteer #1: “It must be nearly time for coffee-break?  Soon?”

C: “Its’ very nearly time to start thinking about it.”

Tea-wallah: “Ah, so another forty-five minutes then.”

Hopeful volunteer #2: “Was that ‘45 minutes’ or ‘4-5 minutes’?”

Tea-wallah: “Okay, we’ll make it 4-5 minutes!”

This was the view from on top of the first compost-heap:

And this the view from the base of the next pile to be built up and compacted:

(Note the train in the background.)

Inevitably some flowers had escaped/been spared the blades of the cutter:

They acted as reminders why we were going to such lengths to preserve the habitat, in order that more flowers can bloom next year.

Autumn Joy

Scrub bash – bonfire – “Can life get any better?”

A distinct mood of joy was evident among Green-Gymmers even before today’s session, in one of our favourite locations in the Chilterns.  Indeed pre-Gym seemed almost an event in its own right today, with some ingenuity displayed in using the facilities already there for changing into boots …

“Ah, that’s what those posts are for!”

and a pre-session introduction to a flower species new to most of us, the ‘fragrant gladiolus’ (G. murielae) which one of our number had cultivated in his garden:

“Abyssinian Gladeoli”

Enthusiasm is a hallmark of Wallingford Green Gym anyway.  However, felling (small) invasive trees, and reducing trees already cut down by other groups, has to be one of our volunteers’ favourite tasks.  This was the first such session of the 2014-15 season.  No doubt there will be many such work-outs to come, but there is always particular delight in the first one.  Especially in a scenic location with beautiful weather to match:

 

The Chief Stoker soon had such a good fire going, it was rather a question of keeping one’s distance:

… and engaging an assistant stoker:

Those who were not able to come today missed out not only on some mega-tree-felling, but also on lemon-drizzle cake!

As for sights of autumn, I think these bijou fungi (gymnopilus? – not edible!) were the most remarkable:

To complete our day, we had a visitor: from one of our colleagues at BBOWT, who were experiencing a little difficulty with their Alpine Tractor.  Always a mistake to turn an engine off in the field – you never know what effort it may take to get it going again!  Doing work the Green-Gym way, of course, we don’t experience problems like that, but I’m sure some of our guys would just love to get their hands on an Alpine Tractor …