Free-range fun

By the session leaders:

“A good half dozen of us,” was C’s initial estimate of numbers for this morning’s free-range gym.  In fact a good dozen Green-Gymmers turned out in the Eastertide sun.

On the way, there were a few reminders of bank-holiday Storm Katie to be seen:

Working beside Benson Brook, was not exactly like being by the beautiful blue Danube:

It may have been Denis Norden, who coined these lines about the Central-European river:

The Danube is blue,
not red or green.

It’s aquamarine,
not tangerine.

But as is well known, the river is blue – at least it is when it flows through Vienna – if you’re in love. 

In (mostly) sunny South Oxfordshire, upstream of the A4074 underpass, one Green-Gym team was trying to restore a pond, which – if it could be seen at all – was just black.  At first it was difficult to determine where, exactly, the pond was in relation to solid ground:

“We’re pooling our resources!”

Once it had been decided where the bank was supposed to be, Green-Gymmers got cracking, dragging vegetation out of the water …

 

and clearing the overflow outlet:

“When you see a big rubber plug – or a chain – don’t pull it!”

By the time they had finished, at least one could see that the area is meant to be pond:

“When I next come along, and look at what we’ve done, I expect to see at least a pelican and a flamingo”

It should look better in a couple of days’ time when the silt has settled out.  Exotic wildlife we cannot promise.

Meanwhile, downstream, the main body of today’s Green-Gym Force was hard at it, continuing with the pollarding of willow begun in our previous session at the site:

This was hard work, requiring judicious application of teamwork and some improvisation of a platform to stand on to get a good sawing angle:

Among the undergrowth which may benefit from getting a tad more sunlight, a butterbur:

Tea-break, in the nearby wildflower meadow, was a very civilised affair:

Over tea-break there was much talk among the Pollarding Team about the necessity of obtaining a photograph of The Big One, to show an absent colleague that it had been done.  The Big One was a particularly challenging willow, which appeared not to have been touched for some years/decades.  The sceptical among us in the team thought there was rather too much looking forward to the satisfaction of being able to share the visual image, while the difficult last third of the job had still to be done.  “Catch your chicken before you grease your pan,” as they say in Wisconsin.

To be fair to the ambitious Pollarders, they made an early start to the second half of the session, while the ‘Pond Team’ was still re-adjusting to now being the ‘Stream Team’.  After the break, the former ‘Pond Team’ carried out some further flow management at the point in the brook where the weir had been removed:

Before

After

The pollarding was not quite all done by session end, but a tremendous amount had been achieved:

All ready for the trees and ground-cover plants to regenerate

Above all, yes, the Big One had been brought to heel, but immediately after the session we were not 100% that in the end the photograph had been taken to prove it!  Thankfully, the image was retrieved - a rare example of the posed Green-Gym photo:

And now to sort out the other important question left hanging in the air after session-end today: who has the tea crate for next week?