Oh, we of little faith!

By the Session Leader:

“RV Tithe Barn, North Farm” acted as a trigger for some volunteers to experience a little scepticism about today’s task.

Last time we were here …

we were heading for a task pulling thistles, having been given dire warnings about how they would take over a field if unchecked.  We did the job, but took the warnings with a pinch of salt.

Today we were to go to another field, where we had helped to plant hundreds of trees in the wet land by the river – each sapling kitted out with a stake and collar.  The warning this time was that infant trees were being taken over by 5-foot-tall grass and thistles, with the result that a few saplings had died, and others were being slowly choked by grass and weeds that had managed to grow inside the collars.  Time for another pinch of salt? 

When we got to the field, we could hardly see the trees for grass, weeds,

and thistles:

The warden was right after all.  Why had we doubted him?

So the master demonstrated the technique of loosening the ties, and lifting off the collar:

Which we soon put into practice …

though undoing the ties was not always easy:

Some collars were choked with grass, but the tree had survived:

Others only revealed weeds, the tree having given up the ghost:

But a number of trees had clearly won:

We had started in the area where the slow growing oak and beech had been planted.  Towards the end we reached an area where faster-growing species had been planted, and these had no trouble beating off the grass and weeds:

A satisfying day, in spite of the slight drizzle.  Sometimes it is hard to know whether “precipitation probability 10%” means a 1 in 10 chance of it raining properly – or just that there will be a tiny little bit of rain on the breeze.

We had only tackled one corner of a large field.  But never mind: we won’t run out of work.

Clean as a whistle, sharp as a thistle

After last week’s “hateful docks” (that’s what Shakespeare calls them anyway: Henry V, 

V ii 52), today it was “rough thistles”.  This from the session leader:

Well, we all got pretty wet.  Mainly from the grass.  It was the thistles, though, which had a rough morning.

We knew it was going to be a dull damp day, so came dressed for the rain:

All bar one, that is.  There was just one participant who couldn’t care less about the weather:

The task was thistle-pulling in a meadow down by the old ferry crossing.  That is one huge meadow, but we were promised that most of the thistles had already been dealt with.

Thistles.  The name alone bring back memories of some years ago, of monstrous thickets of thistles at Castle Meadows that refused to be dug out even with the lazy dogs.  [Or especially with the lazy-dog tools?  Some weeds have to be tackled with a fork, but in some places that is not an option: if soil is fragile, or there are other conservation concerns. – Ed.]   The ones in this meadow were obviously much better bred, or a different species:

The rain and the very long grass had obviously helped.  The thistles did not put up too much of a fight, but enough to get our muscles working.  So we each took up a bucket and proceeded to fill it. 

This was the standard method: crush them down into the bucket as much as possible.

The more elegant/creative members preferred a flower arrangement in the bucket:

Others just carried a huge armful at a time:

Whichever way, all the thistles were carried over and piled in the hedge.  We had thought initially that some were destined to be fed to the goats that are now living in the old barn.  (In fact we thought it would have been much easier to have let the goats loose in the field to save our efforts.)

At the end we were all pretty wet even into wellington boots, as much from the very long grass as from the intermittent drizzle.  (When one Green-Gymmer got home, he took off his boots and poured the water out of them.)

We didn’t quite finish, as you can just make out:

[And are those “hateful docks” I see in the foreground? – Ed.]

Extreme Gardening

Today was one of those occasions when volunteers had to be kept well away from the neighbours.

This was one of the neighbours’ houses:

Green-Gymmers had to be set a task well away from them not because our activities would have disturbed them, but because they would have been constantly distracting us.  This on the way to our work-site:

And these were next door’s children, having a wonderful time in the great outdoors, getting thoroughly messy from head to hoof:

Pigs in their natural habitat – woodland – are a rare sight nowadays.  These ones were very happy pigs.

Our task was to help bring back old woodland to coppicing rotation.  In the early 20th century the area probably had been managed for coppicing (hazels and some standards).  That the woodland is old, is shown by the presence of bluebells – yes, proper English bluebells:

Come March/April, this woodland floor will be a haze of blue:

In the meantime, there were old trees to be cut back.  Here is one which had been done earlier:

Note the brash piled round the base (to obviate depredation by deer), and some leading shoots left so that the tree can regenerate (even if some hungry deer do get through the defences).  During the extensive briefing we were told, “There are more deer in the UK now than ever in history.”

Cut wood was recycled, according to size/straightness, as:

• Stakes and binders for use in hedge-laying
• Logs for firewood
• Brash to put round the stumps
• Material for brash piles neatly constructed so as not to intrude on bluebell habitat

This involved much use of time-honoured tools and methods.  Here a happy Green-Gymmer deploying a billhook:

There was much instruction given on the angle at which to wield one’s billhook.  “A 33⁰ angle” definitely came into it somewhere …

There were also some interesting alternative uses of tools.  This, for example, is not a billhook carelessly left on a stump.  It is for cutting lengths of string:

And this is not a hurdle for a hedgehog gymkhana …

nor a hoop for an extreme version of croquet.  It is for holding a bundle of sticks off the woodland floor, while the length of string is tied round:

The soundscape included, to our delight, the extraordinary sound of happy pigs sleeping it off (who knew pigs could snore so loudly?) and a woodpecker drumming, on a tree, as it should.  Apparently the way to identify the species of woodpecker is to remember that a Great Spotted Woodpecker produces a short ‘drum-roll’, and the Lesser Spotted a long one; while the Green Woodpecker is the one which laughs at you. 

“Yes, there’s one at the golf course which does that,” volunteered one Green-Gymmer: “It laughs even before you’ve putted.”

– “You’re not supposed to putt with a woodpecker,” came the rejoinder: “You’re supposed to use a club.”

(Shades of Lewis Carroll there – Alice trying to use a flamingo as a croquet mallet?)

Green-Gym itself perhaps bears the same sort of relationship to normal horticulture.  

For it has been described as “a combination of extreme gardening and walking, plus just being out in the great outdoors” – in the right kit, of course.  Except that at Green Gym the range of ‘right kit’ varies from the old-&-battered-and-it-doesn’t-matter-if-it-gets-torn-and-muddy to the real town & country look:

All are equally welcome at Green Gym!