Green-Gym mysteries

By ‘C’:

Clocks being laboriously wound back an hour is one good marker of the year falling back into nature-sleep-mode. 

As folks used to say in the days when clocks were rare and expensive luxuries:

At St Simon and St Jude [28 Oct – Ed.]
winter may be viewed

Yesterday morning the season was dressed in its ‘new’ finery.  Filigree frost decorating some of the remaining foliage:

Sadly, today – Green Gym day – was “the first really cold Green-Gym day after the summer”, but a bit of a dull day.  Weather cold and grey.  And not the most exciting or demanding of tasks either: putting to bed the nature-area portion of the yard of one of Wallingford’s town churches.  

There was not that much to do compared with previous end-of-growing-year tidies.  Partly because the summer of 2018 was so hot and dry that many of the types of plant which otherwise threaten to overrun the churchyard, had either nodded off, or were hanging on in the English way: in quiet desperation.  And partly because repeated cutting back by Green-Gym parties over the years is steadily weakening target species.

This meant that fewer volunteers were needed on the main front, at the west end of the site.  Other Green-Gymmers had the chance to seek out other spots where they could make a difference.  Much of this was painstakingly detailed work, eg gently removing ivy from trees, stonework, etc:

As always when vegetation is cut back, there is the occasional interesting ‘find’.  What a broken chisel was doing in the undergrowth we do not know. 

If this were an episode of ‘Midsomer Murders’, there would be deep significance, even if only by way of ‘red herring’.  As it was, the artefact was promptly presented, with all due solemnity ; ) to our Tools Officer “for sharpening”.

And this dented tin …

besides being posed for a photo-call before being transferred to the recycling bin, prompted an animated conversation:

When I was in Australia I was really surprised that people were telling me, “Nar, you don’t wan’ to drink tha’ […]”

– No, they know it’s rubbish.  That’s why they export it.

– The Foster’s drunk over here is brewed in Reading …

– The same way it doesn’t make any commercial sense to transport soft drinks in any quantity: it’s mostly water.  That’s why Coca-Cola is made in the USA, but transported in concentrate, and bottled in the country where it’ll be sold.

By 11 o’ clock – despite the fact that, for once, we had hardly started promptly at 10:00 – most of the work was done:

Before

After barely an hour

In some places, that Green Gym had been could readily be seen.  In the short term, one might not consider that the result does actually look like an improvement.  One just has to have confidence that medium- and long-term, it will be better that this patch, for instance, is not given over to being ‘Nettle Corner’:

Before

Done

If the tea-crate volunteer is going to forget the milk [and that’s something many of us have done in our time – Ed.] a site in Wallingford town centre is a much better place to do it than out on the Chilterns scarp.  Tea-break was re-arranged for a little later than usual, to give volunteer time to nip over to a well-known supermarket to ‘replen’.

In the remaining third of the session, some volunteers elected to put the finishing touches to their chosen task, and then take an early bath.  It was after the official photographer had left for home (via the well-known supermarket) that most of the volunteers seem to have finished off lined up against a wall:

They were probably removing ivy, but why is one of them looking so furtive?  That remains a mystery!