A week’s worth of work in one morning

By the Session Leader:

Had we brought our sleeping bags? – was how the site warden greeted us this morning, adding that there was about a week’s work for us to do. 

One look at the ‘stream’ confirmed the scale of the task in hand:

All watercress, and not a free-running water channel in sight!  Our mission was to put that right.

Why us?  This particular task, we – apparently – do “better than Sonning Common Green-Gym.”  At any rate, our volunteers promptly got stuck in (thankfully, not literally stuck in the occasional patch of mud on the stream bed):

Several Green-Gymmers observed that the cress this year is remarkably “leggy” and “tanglesome”.

It’s hard work, chopping and heaving soggy watercress, and we aren’t called Gym for nothing.  Everyone was very warm despite damp clothes by tea time, but relentlessly cheerful:

There were occasions when a casual observer might have been uncertain as to whether Green-Gymmers were closely considering the next target for vegetation clearance, or looking for wildlife (or signs of buried treasure):

For wildlife, we saw tiny fry, and even a fish about 3 inches long, probably a stickleback; and a heron flew over, inspecting us.  We also found some slug (or maybe snail) eggs, which we photographed alongside a tuppenny bit, so you can see the scale:

Anyone watching us may also have noticed that after tea-break, several volunteers took a little time out to admire the new pond.  We feel quite proprietorial about the pond, because it was we who cut, and wheelbarrowed some distance through the village, the turf for the sides.  The pond has subsequently acquired a viewing/dipping platform, and is now looking quite mature:

Then it was back to work!  You know when a session is at last winding down when there’s a queue of three barrows waiting to be filled …

while those volunteers working in the water are ‘sieving’ the stream for the last bits of cut watercress which had escaped being landed and carted off to the compost heap:

We had not, of course, cleared the whole of the watercourse, but had completed one big section.  It was a good start to what will clearly be an ongoing job over the autumn:

Before

After

Postscript from ‘C’:

What the session leader modestly did not comment on, was how involved she personally was in the effort of the day.  Particularly when the growing compost heap was becoming unmanageable for volunteers on wheelbarrow-delivery duty:

Leader pitching in (with pitchfork)

Leader getting hands-on