Is it autumn or spring?

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 …