A Message to Gabriel

“Yippee! Fallen trees.”

Clearance work can make Green-Gymmers very excited.  (However, the above exclamation was not the message for the Archangel; for that, read on.)  

There were two very different targets for clearance today:

1. Crack-willow, which had cracked under pressure from unseasonal high winds, and had been reduced by a previous group to logs for firewood, and brash for bonfire
   
2. more Yellow Variegated Archangel, which doesn’t mind how strong the wind is, as long as there is another square inch of ground it can take over:

The fallen timber had to be moved because, unfortunately, it had fallen on to an area which is to be turned into a Sand Martin bank.  Essentially, this meant a lot of wheel-barrowing of the neat logs, and carrying of the oddly-shaped branches:

Now this is a sight one does not expect to come across at Green Gym in June:

Flames in June were an unexpected pleasure.  Some disappointment, however, was expressed that this was not one of the items marked for removal by hand:

Even our most stalwart volunteers had to admit that a trunk that size is a chainsaw job.

Some hope was also expressed that this might be a task we could undertake:

Session leader and fellow-enthusiast for taking on Difficult Tasks gaze wistfully at another target

After assessing the task more closely, regretfully the session leader had to conclude that this was another job we would have to leave to another team.

Once all the moveable fallen wood had been removed from sand-martin-bank area, it was time to have another go at the invasive form of Variegated Archangel.  This meant going over a patch of ground where we had worked before, uprooting unwanted plants.  As one volunteer remarked, “Gabriel doesn’t seem to have got the message.”  (The message being that the non-native form of the species is NOT WELCOME.)

Once again we were lucky with the weather.  The day had started off sunny, but not as warm as one might expect in June.  I think the wind was coming from Arkhangelsk.   

By mid-morning, however, it was good that the sky had clouded over; or, wind or no wind, we would have been too warm, on account of all that manual timber-haulage.