All in order

Almost more hands than work to do – or space to do it in (safely) this morning!

The venue was one of the smaller sites, and weather was very pleasant, but not in our favour for undertaking all the tasks on site warden’s wish-list:

• Repairs to part of the boardwalk   YES
• Hazel coppicing   YES
• Bonfire if weather suitable   NO, weather not suitable: blue skies once more, but high wind
• Stream clearance (brook flowing from Ewelme to River Thames)   YES
• Vegetation clearance on the banks of the Thames itself   YES, with caution

So no firestarter required today.  Instead those who could, changed footwear from work-boots to wellies/waders.

Most of those equipped not exactly elegantly, but practically for working in water marched upstream in search of Things To Do:

Waterside Things To Do fell roughly into two categories.  On the one hand, there was working with – or rather cutting back and removing – vegetation.  In Benson Brook …

and beside the Thames:

Not all plants encountered could be identified.  Anyone know what this is?

On the other hand, there were also engineering works:

Meanwhile, back at the hazel coppice, there could be no doubting that there was work to be done.  The trees planted there are harvested for rods on a cyclical basis.  So, it was the turn of some of them to be cut back, but which ones precisely?  It is important that they are all done in the right order.

That took a little while to get sorted, but it was all sorted in the end:

Keeping out of mischief?

“A number of tasks to keep you going,” the site warden had outlined for this morning: 
“a bonfire (provided the wind is not blowing towards the main road) … coppicing … tree planting … trimming the willow spiling … And if all that gets finished then some brook clearing can be done.”

Come the day, the wind was not a problem, just that everything outside was so damp after last week’s (post-Green-Gym) snowfall.  Some of the surrounding landscape was still quite wintry.  This was one volunteer’s route to today’s site:

Having got safely to Green Gym, the first thing volunteers discovered was that there had been a “slight change of plan”.  We would now be starting at the far side of the site.  So the first thing to do was to march across, carrying most of our kit – a nice warm-up:

Even more important to keep your footing on this stretch

Hi ho, hi ho …

Mind your head!

All joined in the preliminary task: clearing the area where saplings were to go in.  (Evidently tree planting was going ahead.)  The closest we got to a bonfire, however, was loading on to a burn-site materials which will be combustible IDC:

Directions

Awaiting a spark

Once the main part of the clearance had been finished, the group split into two teams.  One team stayed put, to finish off making the area as suitable as we could for little trees, and to plant same:

Digging the first hole …

for the first WGG tree-planting of the season

It’s technical

Making progress

Tree planting is something we have done many times before at Green Gym, but there are always individual volunteers for whom this is a new task.  (Which comes with its own terminology: the little saplings are not “sticks”, they are ‘whips’.)  And even if some of us have done this dozens of times before, there is always someone new to work with, who has done this so many more times before, and from whom there is something new to learn.  For instance, that when mulching, it is good not to leave mulch actually touching the young trees.

Teamwork seemed to be a theme of the work at this end of the site, whether labouring or preparing for tea-break:

“It’s post-Christmas season”

Meanwhile, the other team headed not back to the other side of the site, but beyond: to the banks of the River Thames.  First port of call: safety briefing.

“Don’t fall in”

The task seemed to be one which had not featured on the original list: to tidy up bank-edging.

Looking for Moses

Before

After

The expeditionary team returned to base for tea-break.  Minus one member who found they needed to go home to strip off wet clothing and get under a hot shower.  (No, they had not fallen in; but they had become more closely acquainted with the dampness of the Thames in February than is really a good idea, just as they were saying “I need to look out for crocodiles and …”)

After the break, the ‘away’ team made off again, but this time only as far as the hazel coppice, to do a little of the coppicing which had been suggested.  They were back in time to watch the finishing touches being put to the tree-planting project:

Well someone has to finish the job

50 whips in place.  No guarantee how many will ‘take’