After the ‘Summer of 2018’

By the Session Leader (with some photos from ‘C’):

The site was rather greener than when we had last seen it: 

Ewelme Watercress Beds

And it was another beautiful day!  But not as hot as last week.  The really hot weather had bowed out in style after last week’s Green Gym.  Not with a thunderstorm, but robed in violet:

This was a relief for many people working in agriculture – and their thirsty livestock.  Also a relief for Green-Gymmers.  [I had a salt tide-mark on my T-shirt last Tuesday afternoon, which I didn’t discover until after I had put the blog to bed, and put myself under the shower. – Ed.]

Today we were back at the Ewelme Watercress Beds.  It was not, however, to be a usual WGG watercress-bed weeding session, even though there was a lot needed in what are supposed to be channels for watercress, not beds of … what?  Primulas?  Mimulus?

Instead our job today was land-based weeding across the wildflower-meadow areas.  Or rather removing the remains of the perfectly good plants which have to be trimmed at this time of year.  Another work-party had done the cutting, and left risings spread out to dry: 

The first idea was that the really dry cuttings would burn quickly and without much smoke.  A couple of weeks ago that might have been so, except that it would hardly have been safe to light a fire.  Now that dew in the morning is once more in evidence, cut vegetation proved too damp to burn as cleanly as hoped.

Our volunteer having a first go at lighting a Green-Gym fire was, unfortunately, a tad too successful!

The bonfire had to be allowed to burn down, as smoke was beginning to cause a nuisance.

The other members of the team were already raking, and carrying cuttings to a seriously overloaded compost heap.  Before we had even started, the pile was so enormous it needed a tall volunteer to re-arrange it:

Raking was straightforward enough, but there was a huge volume to collect into piles ready to be moved: 

Cuttings were at least dry enough to be easy to move, though there were complaints from some of the loaders that it was difficult to manage where it had been rolled into a long sausage: “Dare I say it – it’s like toilet paper without perforations!”

Transport was by barrow: 

“Yes, there is a barrow under there”

or by the “walking-haystack” method:

The popularity of Ewelme as a Green-Gym venue [the upstream end – Ed.] is partly down to the fact that our visits are enhanced by the luxury of having a tea break in comfort:

At session end we had finished clearing one large area of the meadow, which was very satisfying.  And then the neighbours could open their windows again (no more smoke billowing about), and the site was left to teenage wildlife:

“It’s not called duckweed for nothing”