Wallingford Green Gym: Hedging a bet?

By the session leader:

On hearing that today’s task was “hedging work” how many of us would have put money on it being interesting?

On the other hand, it was a beautiful day to be doing any kind of work outdoors. Here, in the clear air of the morning-hours before session-start at 10 o’clock, is a hedge we did earlier – in the sense that Wallingford Green-Gym members painstakingly planted it, in the metre-wide gap between two parallel lines of barbed-wire fencing on Riverside Meadow, Crowmarsh:

Those of us who were there, will remember that job well, for it took several sessions. During one of them, the snow was being blown in our faces almost horizontally!

Today, however, was an almost perfect summer’s day for doing something which was known in advance to be in some way connected with hedges, but which would obviously not – at this time of year – consist of planting, pruning, or laying. It turned out that the task was in fact to clear a way beside a hedge.

The verges in question, at another Earth-Trust managed site, on the road to Little Wittenham, are very wide: nearly three metres. The tractor and cutter, however, can only cut two metres from the road edge. So we were to clear the metre beside the hedge, and also clear the unwanted weeds growing into the hedge.

It immediately became apparent that the verge had become greatly overgrown over the previous week or two. With tools at the ready, we had to force out way through the first two metres to get to the hedge:

Then we spaced ourselves out for safety, and got to work:

Unfortunately, that food-supplier’s van is delivering to the hidden house, not bringing refreshments for us.

To the passing motorists we were a good advertisement for Green Gym. For some reason, none of them stopped to join us.

Local wildlife turned out to see what we were doing. That is the warden’s glove he is on:

a Garden Tiger Moth caterpillar?

Some Green-Gymmers worked standing with dassel-bashers, others bending or kneeling using shears. Below is not a picture of Green-Gym ceremonial, nor of ceremonious punishment. It is, however, an example of perspective foreshortening. The two volunteers were in fact further apart than the image obtained through the lens of the camera appears to show: