Feet on refurbished ground

By ‘C’:

After gloriously un-traditional bank-holiday-weekend weather, today was similar, but a shade cooler and a wispy bit breezier.  Which made it more comfortable to work in. 

In the past few days, it has been best to get up early if wanting to go into the countryside for the simple purpose of enjoying being there.  Against the backdrop of river-borne mist (and absence of human-generated noise) the quality of early-morning summer light lends charm even to humble buttercups, a spider’s web, or an old tree stump:

By 10 in the morning, the rising sun has burned off the mist, and flattened the light spread over the landscape.  By 10 of a Tuesday morning, however, Green-Gymmers are in the countryside to do some work to cherish it. 

Today we were assembled further upstream from Wallingford.  For today’s session was the answer to the oft-repeated request from some of our volunteers to ‘take me to the river’.  Back to the River of Life project, that is.

Having done our bit in the early stages of this joint Earth Trust / Environment Agency venture – removing Himalayan Balsam from an area where new backwater channels (‘edge habitat’) were to be created for the benefit of spawning fish; planting trees in another zone – we were eager to see how things had developed.

First, a walk through some very pleasant countryside …

past a small herd of cows very curious to know what was going on …

following a vehicle which kept disappearing into the distance …

until we got to the point where we could only proceed on foot, for we had arrived at one of those fields where original wetland features (as shown on older maps of the area) have been lovingly re-created:

Yes, those features really are part of the Thames waterway.  The river itself lies just beyond the fence-line of the field.  If you look very closely, you may be able to spot Dorchester Abbey on the far bank (left side of the picture):

As its restorers hoped, the site is now species-rich.  Flagship fauna sightings include herons, kingfishers, and otters.  I am not sure any of us did spot something exciting like that (or signs that they had been there recently), but I am fairly sure that the strange snatches of bird-call I heard were from a lapwing.

The flora side of things is inevitably still a bit of a work in progress.  When the hard landscaping was done, the meadow was liberally sown with wildflower seed, and indeed there were plenty of signs of multiple species besides grass coming through.  In the first three years of the new life for the land, however, it is particularly important to keep on top of invasive weeds.  For the same soil preparation which benefits wildflowers, also benefits any number of other plants.

Thistles – since most of us do not appreciate a good thistle for breakfast, lunch, or supper – are all well and good in the right location.  Like totally appropriate in:

EEYORES GLOOMY PLACE

RATHER BOGGY AND SAD

But they do not make for good company in what is meant to be a restored wildflower meadow.  Or at any rate, not when they are there in large numbers.

So, although it is for many of us not our favourite task, thistles had to go.  And it was up to Green Gym to show them the door:

There were two main kinds of thistle on location: spear thistles; and creeping thistles.  The difference between them mattered, because disposing of them called for different techniques.  

The aptly named Spear Thistles were best removed by countering them with ‘lazy-dogs’.  Some of those Green-Gymmers who had never used that particular tool before proved most adept:

Some of the effectiveness of volunteers wielding lazy-dogs we can attribute to being able to draw on the hard-won experience of the first group of volunteers to have worked on it this year: the Earth Trust’s own ‘Friday Group’ – last Friday. 

With a full set of lazy dogs to hand, some of our team confidently reckoned, “We could have finished off the whole lot this morning.”  Unfortunately, we only had three lazy-dogs.  The site warden had not discovered until just before the bank-holiday weekend that in the tool-box there were only three of the specialist attachments for tackling single-tap-root plants such as thistles.  (Most of the heads are the three-pronged class, which were obtained to deal with ragwort at another site.)

Personally, I am not quite so sure of the success we would have had.  Spear-thistle pullers seemed to me a bit like anglers: tap roots of stupendous length were reported to have been removed whole and entire from the ground – but never when the camera was there to record the feat.  There was, however, no doubting the authenticity of this early claim to ‘longest tap-root of the day’, which the triumphant thistle-fisher insisted had been a team effort:

Some volunteers found it was best to work in pairs with the lazy-dog.  Others started off that way, and soon found that even with that technology available, they preferred to pull many a thistle by hand:

I liked the thistle impaled on the fence, as if by way of warning to the others:

“This is what will happen if you try to grow here ;)” 

Meanwhile, the Creeping Thistle, was best dealt with entirely by hand.  At least that was the theory.  I myself showed no aptitude for this whatsoever.  Nearly all the thistles I tried to pull, reacted by breaking off – it’s a natural defence mechanism of the plant against grazing animals. 

“They can see me coming,” I complained, “so they know all they need to do is to break off at ground level!”

“No, they see you coming, and they’re afraid.  So what you need to do,” countered an equally tongue-in-cheek colleague, “when you’ve found your next target, is to sing it a happy thistle song!”

I must have looked sceptical (as one would), for she added, “Don’t knock it – it works!”  And off she strode towards her next target, humming/gently singing something which sounded awfully like a certain hymn-tune, except that the words were definitely not
“O happy band of pilgrims”!

It could not be denied that colleagues achieved considerably more success during the morning than I did.  This is what a happy (and efficient) Green-Gymmer looks like:

My best contribution to the morning was to discover – when looking for a better camera-angle – some left-over lengths of sacking, which a couple of volunteers who fancied a change of task, duly emptied of earth, and removed.  Though just at this point, they seemed to have got distracted – I wonder what they had spotted along the river-line:

At last, the last one of the day was tackled.  – And in this photograph you can quite clearly see the top of Dorchester Abbey in the far distance (right-hand side):

So it was time for the fair walk back to our own transport.  Past the feisty steers.  And through the sturdy new gate which was put in to try to persuade them to limit their fact-finding tours to their own field: