Insider with Rosie

By the session leader

What a glorious day for traditional autumn hay making – actually meadow raking for us – or maybe we were just extras in “Cider with Rosie”.  It was a goodly 16 of us who set out with rakes, pitch forks, and tarpaulins:

 

It had been dry for several days, so the grass was dry too; the sun shone; and yet it wasn’t too hot.  How lucky is that?  Everyone busy, in twos and threes, chatting away.

Someone nearly tripped on a hole, which had been a wasps’ nest before it was dug and devoured by a badger.  Sorry, no photo of said hole, but can you spot the ducks, snuffling around in the cress?

The tea-crate wallah, told to bring plenty of cake, selected provisions to match the occasion: angel slices because the day was Michaelmas (Feast of St Michael & All Angels); and carrot cake because that’s what the moon had looked like, to an irreverent skywatcher, at 3.15 am the day before during the lunar eclipse.  One volunteer remarked that, “It’s an ancient Green-Gym custom – we always have angel slices at Michaelmas”!

And there were apples too, red skins and red flesh to match our blood red moon, freshly picked from someone’s home just upstream.

The site warden says the wildlife is doing well this year.  There’s evidence of the hedgehogs which they have been encouraging, but happily don’t see much of.  They have spotted their 90th species of bird.  The butterflies are doing well.  And tomorrow our warden does a river fly survey: he lowers a net into the stream, stamps around for a few minutes and then examines the resulting catch in his net.  There’ll be plenty of water shrimps and cadis fly lavae tomorrow.

Here is the local bug hotel – and a bee house, which is fully occupied with eggs for next year, as you can tell because all the holes are plugged:

And finally, it’s the 25th anniversary of the Watercress Beds Nature Reserve, and they are celebrating on Sunday.  We wish them Many Happy Returns!

The best-laid plans

“Reed-fen clearance by hand” was the main element of the plan for today.  It seemed an unusual mission.

When I first read that in our brief, I had a vision of a line of Green-Gymmers tooled up with scythes.  Nothing so exotic, however!  The explanation continued that we would be taking out small willows and cutting the vegetation in those places where site staff had cut as much they could by machine – “we kept getting stuck / hitting logs and trees”.  So it would be over to us with bow-saws, loppers, shears, and – when it came to removing old log piles for use in a new beetle habitat/sculpture – our bare hands.  Well no, not actually bare hands: gloved/gauntleted hands.  Especially with it being ‘C’ down to lead again (the H&S “extremely overzealous” one, as a visiting researcher put it).

For those who didn’t fancy trudging around a reed fen, there were to be the more homely tasks of running a bonfire, and rejuvenating/maintaining outdoor furniture – sanding, mending, and painting.

For the refreshment of all workers, there were treats brought from overseas for tea-break: pain d’épice pur miel from Limoges; and pâtes de fruits – or rather ‘fruit dainties’ since these particular ones were from South Africa.

That was the plan.

Then came the phone call: sadly, session cancelled.  On account of the car-park being out of service. 

This was disappointing, of course, but not altogether a surprise.  For last time we were there, the area was over-run by contractors working on things which were nothing to do with the nature reserve, but entailed vans and heavy equipment causing something of an obstruction on the access lane, and taking up a goodly part of the parking area.

Ah well, these things happen.  Treats to be consumed next week instead.  And actually, it was a bit of a lucky let-off for us volunteers: the forecast was for heavy rain.

Prickly Burdens and Steep Slopes

By today's session leader:

Walking around the ramparts of Castle Hill at the Earth Trust does not give a real impression of how effective the fortifications were.  

It is only when Green Gymmers have to climb up and down the sides of the ramparts that you realize they could have been a very effective defence.  The extra layers some had put on were not needed for long.

“You can tell the year has turned when Green-Gymmers start putting on more layers”

The site warden’s task was to cut the brash on the outer sides of the ramparts with his brush cutter equipped with a new circular blade:

Our task was to clear the brash from where he had worked, carry it up the outer slope and down into the moat to a fire.  Before that, however, we had to dismantle the fire base … 

move it to a new location in the moat, and rebuild it:

The fire marshal could get his first load of fuel that was already on hand:

Then the hard work started.  [Ed: you mean carrying some of those solid blocks for the fire base wasn’t hard work?]  First, dragging the brash up the steep outer slope:

Then dragging, carrying, or rolling it along the top of the rampart:

Finally, carrying, throwing, or rolling it down into the moat to the fire marshal:

It was a satisfying day, though:

And we left a few teasels for another day: