Many hands make for light work

By the Session Leader:

“What a grand day!” as one of our volunteers exclaimed as she arrived.  

Overnight temperatures at the nearest weather station had dipped to -4.6 C.  So first thing the sweet spring flowers had frost on them:

Frost soon melted in the warm sunshine.  Green-Gymmers warmed up too. 

There were many of us this morning: 15 volunteers altogether.  [Plus 2 supernumeraries – Ed.]  Hence a crowded car park: 

We had worked on the site in the autumn, and not much had grown over the winter.  The leader was therefore worried that we were not going to have enough work.  He need not have been concerned: we were given a good list of five main jobs.

The first was right behind the cars.  Wheel-barrowing (some of) the pile of logs …

over to the wood store.  

Not so easy as two of the barrows had faulty tyres!  But by the end of the session the workforce had moved those logs which were ready for burning, restacked the oversize ones, and left the area neat and tidy:

The second job was very familiar: filling in potholes along a driveway.  This looked as if this was a task which had been done before in previous years:

With all their training and experience from last time we did this at Green Gym, there were Green-Gymmers eager to volunteer for that:

It had to be a team of 4: two to shovel (we had only 2 spades); one person “wheelbarrow competent and confident”; and one supervisor to hold the imaginary clipboard. 

They started at the far end of the driveway …

and worked their way inwards, with much mock-serious discussion about “grading” of potholes, “belts” of potholes, whether the team should be engaged in “pothole prevention work” by addressing smaller depressions which had the potential to become potholes in the future, and working methods:

“You need to work in unison.”

– “We are in Unison!”

– “And we could tender for projects left by Carillion.”

When they had done, you could certainly see where they had been.  They had left the drive easier to motor along, but looking like it had sticking plasters:

 

Meanwhile the third task was being tackled in hiding:

This team was cutting down part of a tree that had collapsed with the weight of ivy and wind-pressure.

A fourth team was tackling a bigger horizontal tree that had also collapsed.  But the leader failed to take a photo.  Or were those volunteers trying to stay incognito?

The fifth team had found a gap in the dead hedge at the far end of the site which required some hefty stakes to be brought over from the sawing teams:

The porter happens to be Scottish, but this is not the Highland Fling.

The stakes had to be sharpened …

then hammered into place.

In the middle of all the work we had to stop for tea-break which was in an idyllic spot …

under the shade of the London plane tree which we have admired on previous occasions:

The goodies included home-made Jaffa cakes and frangipane:

The general verdict was that they were “better than the ones you can buy in shops.”

As the tasks were finishing we were left to drag as much dead, and live, wood as we could to build up the dead hedge by the road:

Two characters turned up along the way, and wanted to join: 

Spiderman I recognize.  Who’s the other dude?

PS from the Editor:

One of our readers may be able to help with identification of our supernumeraries?  Spiderman was my fave comic-book hero when I was a kid; subject of endless spin-offs since.  I have yet to see a Green-Gymmer superhero or lego character.

All Things Willow

By ‘C’:

‘Green engineering’ was on the menu today; aka bankside-stabilisation works beside the River Thames.

Some of us [she means herself – Ed.] had a little difficulty understanding a few of the instructions sent out ahead of the session.  The caveat that we would be working at Riverside Meadow “if all goes to plan, and we don’t have a sudden large amount of rain that raises the river!” was clear enough.  There was in fact sustained rainfall over the weekend, and even a little snow, in addition to gusty winds which had brought down the odd tree on the other side of the village:

This morning, however, the site where we were to work, was accessible – at least to people, shod in wellington boots.  Our RV point lived up to its billing as being off what is known locally as Watery Lane:

As for the meadow itself, as per our advance briefing, it was “pretty muddy down there”:

(Photographs above taken yesterday during a spell in which the weather was more camera-friendly than had been forecast for today.)

The general outline of the work required was also quite clear: adding bundles of willow on to the larger of two areas we had worked on before.  Loose willow would be supplied from that coppiced by ourselves on a previous occasion, at a different site (21 Nov 2017).  Timber, for uprights to secure the bundles in place, would also be supplied, but each post would need trimming to a reasonably sharp point.

It was when the advance briefing got down to fine detail that (probably ‘thanks’ to Spellchecker) rogue elements crept in.  Some, such as the promise of “steaks” instead of ‘stakes’ (Mmm … steak) are unlikely to have confused anyone with two oars in the water.  [But we all have our dreams – Ed.]  Others, such as “bill hocks” for ‘billhooks’, had a certain surreal quality to them.  Images came to mind of penniless volunteers pawning tools not required that day.

One autocorrect-fail had me completely baffled.  ‘Billhooks’ to put points on stakes, I get.  ‘Axes’ likewise.  But “Sara to sharpen stakes”?  OK, I admit it: I was a few fries short of a Happy Meal at the time.  I was dependent on a colleague pointing out that ‘r’ and ‘a’ are close to ‘w’ and ‘s’ on a QWERTY keyboard.

So, equipped – according to personal preference – with billhooks, axes, and saws ‘green engineers’ set to work.  The plan had been to drive landie + trailer-load of materials down to the river bank, but it seemed better on the day to leave the vehicle on the firmer ground of the upper meadow, near the mouth of Watery Lane.  [Which my own spellchecker has just tried to amend to ‘Water Lane’. – Ed.]

As much of the work as possible was carried out on the upper part of the meadow, where the ground was less soggy.  This meant unloading the trailer of the consignment of coppiced willow …

then fashioning most of the rods into bundles (secured with biodegradable string), and transporting them to the area of riverbank which is to be built up.  Transport by hands of volunteers, that is: not the coal train.

(What the photographs do not show clearly, is the lifesaving equipment stowed during the session on the rails; and the care taken with moving about the site, and making sure no-one was left on their own in a situation where they might have got into difficulties.)

By session end, we had a trailer emptied of brash.  So it was time to load back into the trailer the wheelbarrows we had not used (except for one experimental run: not repeated) plus the sharpened stakes (which will be sunk into place at a later date), and the odd bit of rubbish found on site:

And the woodchips from pointing the stakes?  Those went for path-surfacing:

So today was ‘green engineering’ in several respects, including recycling and re-using as many materials as possible.  It will be even greener if some of the willow laid in place by the river, sprouts.  As it probably will.