The morning after last week’s aborted Green
Gym, the sun was out again – revealing plenty more evidence of the destructive
power of a spring gale:
After that, March winds continued to march
across the landscape for much of the rest of the week – sunny spells alternating
with heavy rain. Volunteers ‘survived’ ;) the enforced day off last week. God only knows where we’d be without Green Gym? Maybe not: one Green-Gymmer
reported “having a lazy morning: drinking coffee, and eating very slowly cooked
sausages while reading the paper!” [The
newspaper, not pulp fiction. And
was that sausages being eaten very slowly, or sausages which had been
slow-cooked? Or both? – Ed.]
Today, the wind had calmed down. First thing, down in the Thames Valley, the weather may have been a little drab – like the colouring of the chiffchaff whose
arrival heralds the new season – but it felt almost like a spring day:
Several hundred feet higher up, on the
Chilterns scarp, the season was less advanced. By now, however, there could be no doubt, it was really
rather a lovely morning to be out in the South-Oxfordshire countryside:
Our mission: to give chalk-grassland a
haircut. So a normal day at the Natural
England reserve, as scrub management is the one task that is never
completed. As soon as one area is
cleared, there are numerous others that nature has taken back.
Unlike many of our sessions there, we had to
carry our tools only a short distance from car park to work area: there was not
the usual steep slope to negotiate before we could even start work. The woods at the edge of the field had a ‘Hänsel and Gretel’ feel to
them:
That splendid new hat set the scene:
A quick sort of the tools …
and we were off. The ‘scrub’ was mainly low-level and small in
diameter. Today’s work-out was mostly a
matter of bending down with shears – or loppers, or secateurs – to remove encroaching,
smothering brambles:
Most of us found that this was not an
exercise which could be done continuously.
Too demanding on the back! So
there was time too to stop and admire the view from on top of the Chilterns
when the weather shifted to sunlight over the land below:
“You also get good views of weather fronts
coming in,” commented the site warden. Many
is the time in the past when we have so managed to arrange things at Green Gym that
we are in our cars ready to leave when the first of a band of rain arrives.
Some of us wondered if there might not be enough
wind this morning for a fire to be lit, to dispose of the arisings. Despite initial scepticism (“It’ll all be too
damp, with all the rain we’ve had recently”) a bonfire was attempted …
successfully:
Plus, our fire marshal gave some fire-lighting training to his new
deputy.
The soundscape this morning was also
interesting. A chiffchaff, with the distinctive song after which it is named, gave assurance that even here it is indeed getting on
for the end of winter. (Apparently at
this reserve the first chiffchaff of the year was heard a couple of weeks ago.)
The snip-snip-snip of a body of
volunteers working with shears prompted the session leader to remark that “It
feels like the hairdresser’s here!” And,
with all the green stuff being loaded on to it, the bonfire crackled merrily:
Green-Gym chatter ranged from details of the assault
on Pegasus Bridge (OP Deadstick, 6 June 1944) to the virtues of St
Joseph, whose feast-day is today (a break from the Lent fast: perfect excuse
for all volunteers to tuck into cake at tea-break). Obviously Joseph is patron saint of carpenters
and labourers generally, which would certainly include Green-Gymmers. But do you know which countries he is patron
of? This was looked up via a smart-phone
during tea-break. Answer below.
In the second half, work was more of the
same. That progress was being made was
clear to be seen. It also revealed to
advantage the line of fencing, which we had put in on a previous occasion:
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| Before |
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| After |
That there was no end in sight to
bramble-clearance, however, caused even Green-Gym spirits to droop a little. Perhaps we should have offered a prayer to St
Joseph? As it was, another outbreak of
sunshine prompted calls to “get the deckchairs out” ;)
Near the gateway
there was a slight change of emphasis in the work when the site-warden observed
that the sheep’s water trough was a little difficult for the animals to
reach:
That was soon sorted:
Work had to come to a final stop when it was
time to carry the last loads to the flames, and let the fire die down. Here, some members admiring their handiwork:
At the very end, it was just like the old
days at Green Gym: the weather held while we were out in it; spots of rain on windscreens
as we set off home.
Answer
to the saint-teaser:
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| Statue in chapel of Burnham Abbey |
Joseph, aka Yosef benYa‘akov, husband of
Miryam, from whom was born the Yeshua that was called the Messiah (Matthew’s Gospel 1:16), is patron saint
of: Canada, Mexico, China, Korea, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Peru, and Vietnam. San Jose – the Spanish form
of his name – is said to be the most common place-name in the world.
His great virtue? “He doesn’t try to be centre stage but he is
a great enabler of others.”
