Extra, extra!

Summer is here.  Well for a couple of days anyway – and Green-Gymmers back in action again before the week was out:

With a fine evening in prospect, staff at one of the sites we frequent, had sent a speculative email to friends & supporters about an ad-hoc work-party from 6 to 9 pm.  
I thought it sounded a lovely idea – and something we had thought about in the early days of Green Gym, but naturally it depended on warden(s) also being on the spot.

I was free, so why not?  Especially since the email happened to arrive when I was engaged on a particularly tedious task on the computer!  It gave me something to look forward to.  What could be more pleasant than messing about, to good purpose, in a beautiful spot by the river, with friends (and tea + cake to hand), in the calm of a lovely summer evening?

The main task was continuing where we (WGG) had left off the other day: extracting fallen tree, bit by bit, from out of the Thames.  This time with a few more resources.  Like a man in a boat, with a chainsaw …

and a team onshore with cable and winch:

Much still seemed to depend on muscle-power and simpler technology.  Such as ropes …

and rakes:

One thing about working in the countryside is that you never know when you are going to spot something exciting.  A barn owl on this occasion, flying along the opposite bank, and – with practised talons – picking up dinner along the way so easily it appeared entirely casual.  This was cause for great excitement, especially among younger team-members: “An owl, an owl!”

Too far away, alas, for me to capture on camera.  The expression caught here may have been a moment of triumph for the brute-force-and-ignorance approach to river clearance rather than the moment in which the owl was spotted:

This was the pièce de résistance on the part of the advanced-technology team:

Unfortunately, for all their fine efforts, there is a little bit more to do.  This was where they had to leave off for the day:

For some on site it had been a very long day.  One had been out with Sonning Common Green Gym: they had been “dragging – dragging, 300 yards, all morning,” I am told.

Meanwhile, a few yards downstream, some of us were enjoying a more tranquil scene:

Here the task was one more familiar to a Green-Gymmer.  Where another willow-tree had fallen victim, there was brash to be lopped/sawn/broken up by hand, and disposed of:

Here you can see the base of the tree (now reduced to being used as a post on which to hang the bag for rubbish).  Behind is the portable burner and the length of crushed reed-bed where the tree had come down:

That too is a task awaiting completion on another day.  Possibly by Green Gym.