Time slowing down

Nature enforced a change to our plans for this week.  Some newly-nesting birds had moved in where we were going to be working.

Clearly it was us humans who were going to have to give way.  Especially since what we do is intended to be of benefit to the countryside environment as a whole: not just to homo sapiens.  Being in no more position to argue with coots which had decided on a second brood this year, than the world’s time-keepers are with the planet revolving a fraction slower than our atomic clocks allow for, we meekly re-scheduled our session for ‘the other Anne Carpmael Trust site’: a wildflower meadow by the Thames:

As it happened, the change of schedule meant we had fetched up at the place which some of us had been talking about only the previous week.  One volunteer, who confessed she “would not know a dormouse from an ordinary mouse”, had asked then whether there were dormice in Paradise Wood, Wittenham.  To which the answer from the site warden there had been “No, that’s not very likely!”  We (other Green-Gymmers) were able to add that the nearest known dormice would be at Little Meadow, Goring – and that dormice are not actually mice.

Dormice are more closely related to squirrels.  For one thing, they have furry tails, which on the whole mice do not; and in the summer they scamper about in the canopy of trees.  They are also relatively long-lived for small mammals: typically 4-6 years.

These days the term ‘common dormouse’ is preferred to ‘hazel dormouse’, as folks have got round to realising that the gastronomic preferences of dormice run to a great deal more than hazelnuts.  Dormice will eat aphids, for instance.  They have also been found in habitats such as Forestry Commission conifer plantations, where there are no hazel trees to be seen.  Most of the creatures live in the southern counties of England, but for some reason there is also a significant population in Hexham.

Today, in meadow beside dormouse-habitat, a start had already been made on the annual cut-and-clear, in the sense that the first area had been cut.  From the towpath it was initially difficult to see what some Green-Gymmers were doing, except that they appeared to have travelled back in time to an era when all such jobs were done by hand:

It was only on approaching closer that it became clear that all the volunteers in that team had initially set to raking:

Next task was to drag cuttings/hay.  The material being so dry, this initially encouraged Green-Gymmers to go for a few large loads to drag rather than many small journeys to the haystack:

The other difficulty with large loads was that they then needed to be rolled up the slope, to the top of the stack:

At least the views were good from the top:

And on hand, were:

• Site warden to award verbal praise and encouragement.  Apparently “it’s not everyone who’d turn out on a Tuesday morning to wrestle with hay” and we are “really very special people”.  Many a person may have reflected that today truly is an even longer summer day than usual.  What a way to spend the extra second!
• Fellow-volunteer to pour cool water over the head, and down the back of the T-shirt – “very refreshing on a warm day”, I’m told; although it does look like some kind of religious ceremony:

(The Feast of St John the Baptizer was last week, folks!)

The alternative task was sanding & varnishing benches.  This was something we had hoped to do on a previous occasion, but weather did not permit.  Today, even if birds were not co-operating with the WGG schedule, at least the weather was:

Good hay-making weather = good paint/varnish-drying weather.

Warm weather also made for a more leisurely tea-break than usual – in the shade.  Which also gave time to see with one’s own eyes evidence that efforts to make the Thames more fish-friendly may be having some impact.  These littl’uns (c 5 cm) could clearly be seen from the bank:

If the pace of raking & dragging was slower, and the loads lighter after the break, this was entirely understandable.  There were certainly more pairs of willing hands ready to work on the second bench than the first! 

It can be a curiously satisfying task, sanding wood – especially when there are several people at work.  Each person working at a slightly different pace leads to some interesting sound effects.  And, as our informal motto proclaims, you could see where we had been.