Snow at Christmas?

By ‘C’:

The white stuff is not something we can promise at any time.  Indeed the weather outlook for Christmas Day is mild, wet, and possibly quite windy.

Today, however, it did not just keep on raining.  On the contrary, the sun came out for the first time in about a week, as if specially for Green Gym.  Hence the number of warm tops being discarded after the initial chill of the morning:

 

The wet stuff was merely the environment we were working in, for the main job was – as always, it seems latterly, when we go to Ewelme – “a bit of channel clearing.”  The task was nominated by the site warden on two grounds: a. “let’s not change a winning side”;  b. the RV point is near the pub!

Opinions among Green-Gymmers varied as to whether the winning side referred to was the watercress on site.  We have, after all, worked on removing exuberant excess of growth here before.  Last month, for instance …

and in October 2015 (note Shepherd’s Hut PH in the background, top left) …

and November 2014 …

and so on, almost back to the original founding of the group.

None of that seemed to deter an impressive number of Green-Gymmers from volunteering for more of the same in this last session of 2016.  – Though one old hand added the intriguing rider, “But I'll not be doing any plodging.”

So, here we were again …

and (those who wished) slashed, raked, and plodged their way upstream.  The instruction was, “Stop when you get to the visitor centre” – that’s the first of the brick buildings in the background:

An extraordinary amount was achieved.  Helped by the fact that our team today included three Canadian visitors, who’ve never done this before ...

There were also some ‘servicing’ tasks ashore.  Some of us took turns with landscaping the growing compost heap – only occasionally making fools of ourselves, when a foot went in ankle-deep through the spoil created by of a whole year of watercress clearing by different groups.  (And yes, often enough over the years, in such circumstances Green-Gym thoughts have turned to the gentle wit of Rabbi Blue of blessed memory.)

For those who (entirely understandably) wanted to have nothing at all to do with the plodging, there was an alternative task: moving woodland from one location to another.  The idea was to create a natural screen on one side of the pond, which we had helped to landscape earlier this year. 

Proof positive that we do undertake jobs other than channel-clearing at Ewelme.  Back in April it was a question of moving grassland from one location to another:

Since then the pond-surround has matured nicely:

The servicing task today was to dig out freshly-sprouting from one spot where it would not have been very helpful …

and replant it where it will do a useful job in the future:

At tea-break we got to open an early Christmas present, courtesy of the home-baking skills of a former regular member.  (Thank you, Kerry!  And thank you to the rest of the tea-crate team, who stepped up to the challenge of supplying sustenance to a crew, which we knew would be large, but we didn’t know in advance how large.)

Best wishes to all for the Xmas/New Year break!