Un-hateful hazel

By ‘C’:

Dormice and other small mammals are not the only creatures to like hazel.  We do too. – The species of tree, that is.  Not the girl with the dirty-blonde hair.  Nor the rabbit. 

Green-Gymmers are fond of hazel trees, because to keep a grove of the things healthy, it is necessary at intervals to get in there with saw/billhook and coppice them – and we like chopping things.  We like it even more with the sun on our backs.   

This morning, however, waiting at the RV point was slightly dispiriting:

The Goring Gap does not look nearly so pretty in the rain:

Still, when there’s that much low-lying cloud, you can pretend to yourself that there are lofty mountains beyond the little hills which you can see.  And if we had stopped at home, we would not have been working/working out to the sound of a chorus of Redwings.  Plus the odd Fieldfare.  Both of them, ‘winter thrushes’.

The site itself looks lovelier in summer.  And Green-Gymmers themselves are easier to spot when wearing their summer gear.  Here the thin green line of volunteers is starting to move forward against the excess growth in the hazel grove:

How much wood to take, and which surplus trees to take out altogether, was a matter of judgement for individual workers.  It was a matter of keeping a balance between:

• letting in more light
• maintaining “connectivity” for the dormice

By session end, when volunteers step back to see how much we have done, we had coppiced about half the grove.  And the day had brightened up somewhat:

Combo-session

By the Session Leader:

A beautiful site, a good turn-out, slight fog, and frozen ground; but a promise that sunny weather was on its way.

Two tasks: burning brash; and replacing a rotten gate-post.

Two problems: the brash might be too wet to burn; and the ground might be frozen too hard to dig out the old post, and dig in the new. 

So we split into two teams.

The first job on the old post was to pry off the cross bar supports and unbolt the gate catches, well rusted in with five big coach bolts.  [Bolts fitted by Wallingford Green Gym, as we sunk the original posts, and hung the gate, as part of the pond-area restoration project, which was the first major undertaking for WGG, all those years ago. – Ed.]   

With the right spanner and a strong arm, the fittings came away, and were put aside for the new post.

The old post was now free, and easy to lift out.  Then came the long task of digging out the rotten wood below the ground, and slotting in the new post.  A task so arduous that the photographer was carried away with enthusiasm, and forgot to take pictures of the work until it was all finished at the end of the session (bar fixing the metal fittings):

[Thus you will simply have to take our word for it that the excavating team was a mixed male-female group. – Ed.]

The incendiary team started by building a platform for their fire, to prevent damage to such “an important archaeological site”:

A pile of brash was already there and ready, except that it was the wrong side of a barbed wire fence.

The fire raising experts coaxed a fire into life:

To help our controlled bonfire along, some drier cut-stuff was brought across from where the bush surrounding the area of the pond (frozen this morning, of course) had been given a ‘haircut’.  The trimming of the hedge had also opened up more of a view:

When a few larger logs had been added to the nascent bonfire, it was time to take a break, while the wood on the fire dried out, and started to give the blaze some more heat.

Over tea-break we reflected that there were a dozen of us in the work-party, which felt very satisfying.  “Twelve is a good number of people to have,” observed one volunteer.  “An apostolic number,” commented another, who had hastily to explain that it was the number of Jesus’ closest ‘disciples’ (students), and added they were sure there were good practical reasons for picking twelve to mess together (therefore necessarily all the same sex/gender, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the time/culture), learn together, and then go out on mission as ‘apostles’ (ambassadors) – as well as the symbolism of the number matching the number of the tribes of Israel.

Which in turn prompted a discussion of who could name all the tribes of Israel.  None of us could!  So the Editor was enjoined to look out a definitive answer.  This from the Virtual Jewish Library:

Biblical tradition holds that the twelve tribes of Israel are descended from the sons and grandsons of the Jewish forefather Jacob and are called ‘Israel’ from Jacob’s name given to him by God.  The twelve tribes are as follows: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim and Manasseh.

Thoughts then turned to the observation that in the painting of the Last Supper by Leonardo, there are apparently more limbs than could belong to those depicted as being present at the scene. – A highly cultured conversation, ended abruptly when we realised there were only eleven of us present at tea-break.  Had we lost a Green-Gymmer somewhere along the way, or were there only ever 11 of us today?  A hasty re-count of the attendance list yielded a total of 11 members signed up for the session.

It was after the tea-break that the fire really got going:

More cut vegetation was on the opposite side of the site.  Some of the strongest members [again, by no means an all-male squad - Ed.] piled it all on tarpaulins, and by brute strength dragged it all the way over to the fire:

This new fuel was rather wet.  Hence the smoke screen, hiding everyone from view:

At going-home time for us volunteers, we left one of the wardens behind to wait until the fire had burned out and was safe to leave.  A very pleasant day was had by all.

The colour of the day

By ‘C’:

After ‘Blue Monday’ comes Green Tuesday. 

Now the first of those – the supposed ‘saddest day of the year’ (northern hemisphere only) – may be a myth.  In any case, totally does not apply to some cohorts of the population.  Fans of the Green Bay Packers, for example, who are still in celebratory mode:

“Go, Pa-a-ack!”

I give you, instead: Green Tuesday.  That’s not punk- or Day-Glo-green.  Or feeling-nauseous or eat-up-your-greens green.  Or jealous-of-people-doing-paid-work-in-offices green.  It’s green as in leafy ‘green spaces’: outdoors, communing with nature.  Green the colour of hope, serenity, and growth.  Green as in today, 17-1-17: first ‘normal’ session of the new year for Wallingford Green Gym.

‘Normal’ it may have been today.  Well as normal as it gets at WGG.  Nevertheless (“Hurray! a break from watercress”), there was a departure from the pattern of recent sessions.  For although we were once more in watercress-country (aka Benson/Ewelme area), and it was certainly watery enough in places, our tasks today were on solid ground: coppicing old trees; and planting new ones.  In both cases, hazel.

Actually the “old” trees to be coppiced were only some 10 years old.  The grove where they had been planted is coppiced on a rotational basis, to harvest rods.  The first compartment had been coppiced last season.  Our task was to service the next 4 x 8 section of trees:

Note the volunteer standing by on the right, to deliver cut wood over the fence on to the meadow, where it would be sorted, trimmed, and stacked:

It would not have been WGG if there were not at some point a (mock) complaint from workforce to management, plus a (friendly) demarcation dispute between volunteers.  The ‘dispute’ was between lopper-wielders and porters.  The ‘complaint’ was that we were only allowed to coppice one-sixth of the grove.  Green-Gymmers would gladly have done the lot.  Indeed they were putting the finishing touches to the job by tea-break:

Meanwhile, on the other side of the (small) meadow, another team had been engaged on the next stage of a long-term project to reclaim land for nature.  Some years ago, we had removed the plastic sheeting and other detritus of a former market-gardening enterprise.  Then there had been a long wait to see what (if anything) spontaneously grew in the newly liberated earth.  The answer had proved to be: nothing of great interest.  So now we moved in to plant more hazel, but here not in regimented columns and rows.

The planting itself followed the usual pattern for ‘whips’.  Dig hole/slot …

plant whip …

“This isn’t a whip – it’s a whippet[te]!”

then heel in:

What was different today was that when all the new trees had been moved in, each had to be dressed with a bowtie:

The idea was that over the summer it would help prevent them from being run over by the mower.

Similarly, the planned footpath was demarcated from some of the wood from a larger tree, which had been removed from among the maturing hazel grove:

Now that tree-planting was underway, it also seemed a good time to remove sections of redundant low-railing.  This was undertaken with some relish.  Partly using tools, to lever railings away from posts …

and partly by brute force and ignorance, to loosen posts before pulling them out by hand:

After tea-break, it was mostly a matter of clearing up the cut wood.  Some volunteers also went out on missions to seek and destroy bramble, which if left to its own devices would only encroach on to hazel grove.  While others bravely took on the task of raking the pond.  Leaning out with the rake, and pulling it back, was a task for one person:

Levering the rake-load out on to dry land, however, took two pairs of hands:

What the camera cannot capture in that situation is the smell.  Today, however, was a normal Green-Gym session.  So no seasonal get-together.  So volunteers did not have to worry if they would be in a fit state after the session to walk into a pub/café.

STOP PRESS

Proof that serious discussions do continue after the end of a WGG session:

On this occasion, volunteers were evidently not in the position of having to go straight home and under the shower.  A report has just come in that over a post-Green-Gym coffee at a noted local eating establishment overlooking a marina, they attempted to address the question: "How much do sea levels change due to variations in barometric pressure?"  Top-of-the-head calculations apparently yielded results ranging from 3" to 3'.  Our correspondent adds, "Further scientific studies will now be undertaken, and results given out next Tuesday."