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:
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