By ‘C’
It certainly
does not feel like winter. The date may
be the last week in December, but the weather has been oscillating between
autumnal gales and vernal sunshine.
These last
couple of days, the forecast has been for dry & sunny, but dawn has worn a
more menacing look …
and indeed it did actually rain as we were on our way to Green Gym this morning.
Which made these seem even more
incongruous:
Fortunately,
the weather, poised between alternatives summed up by the two patterns of cloud, one low and heavy with rain, the other high and light ...
settled for the warm-and-dry option.
In fact it
turned out to be a beautiful day to be out by the watercress beds …
and a
beautiful day to be outside wielding a mattock:
The birdsong
around us, as we worked, was definitely spring repertoire. The notable performers were a chiff-chaff and
a blackbird (“the one that sounds
like someone using an old-fashioned bicycle pump”).
For the
Tuesday after Xmas, we had a good turnout.
Those who were able to come, discovered that there was some Christmastide
treats lurking amid the normal items at tea-break:
Preparation
for the session had not been without its difficulties. Baking the meringues, the session leader
claimed, had been one of the easier tasks.
(“He’s a man of many talents!”)
The principal difficulty had been with a computer playing up: hence
delegation of blog. Thankfully, he was
able to fall back on the iPad recently given him by his loving family – which, I can report, he has safely got
to grips with. Not all the normal pre-session
communications between Green-Gymmers had, however, come to pass.
As for the
task, for which the mattock was the most apt tool, it was to … dig up some of
the trees planted by us in a session some years ago. As they grew, some of the saplings (obtained
on special offer?) turned out to be beech trees. These simply grow too large, shade out other
plants, and drop too many leaves to be suitable for this site. So out they had to come. By brute force if necessary:
Those items
which could be re-used (eg straight lengths of trunk, with the side branches
trimmed away – with the billhook) were stowed away against another day:
Meanwhile,
the other task was to clear some of the unwanted vegetation from the bank. Here, Green-Gymmers are in tidying-up mode:
This was the
only casualty of the day:
It eventually
gave way altogether, when some unfortunate person, who had not realised
that it was on its way out, attempted to use it:
The last act
of the session was a washing-up party – washing the tools, that is, not the
session-leader’s iPad:
The city of Oxford, I am reliably informed, has woken up again after the
Christmas shut-down. My walk back home,
however, took me through sleepy South-Oxfordshire villages:
It is
actually Tuesday today, I am sure. For how else would it have been Green Gym
this morning?
For a final WGG treat,
my route took me along a path which we cleared in another session some years
back now. You can still see where we’ve
been, maintaining the public path; and now I know how the grass to the side has
been kept in check:
 |
| The grass is always greener … |
