Seeds of Love

By the session leader:

Seeds with love or at any rate, wildflower seeds, including cornflower, scattered with a gentle blessing on to soft ground lovingly prepared for them: that was the main task for us this week.

The tools laid out ready for us give an idea of the scale of the job …

                            
and photographs from last summer show what we may hope for IDC:

The results of our work at the exact same spot last year

“The best show of wildflowers we’ve ever had”

There were times during the session when all twelve volunteers were engaged on the wildflower front, with the session leader following the excellent principal of leading by example:

‘Lifting and sifting’ was the name of the game: some of us lifted the soil with forks/spades (aka “plonk, dig and turn”); others winkled out the young grass, which apparently grows too vigorously to be allowed in a wildflower meadow (“shake, rattle and roll”).  Notice the broken fork, giving rise to calls for “fork handles” – even so, still usable, indeed possibly the best tool for the job.  Meanwhile, another fork broken in use in a previous session had been dutifully mended by our wonderful Tools Officer, and was proving well fit for purpose:

One special plant had managed to reseed itself and regrow.  This was duly rescued and replanted:

Posts were also driven into the ground, so that the area can be roped off.  It is hoped this will deter horse-riders from letting their mounts trample over the meadow-to-be.

By tea break, the wildflower-patch team reckoned they were just over half way.  

Thankfully, after the break reinforcements were available, for in the course of the morning there were other small tasks, carried out by detachments from the main force.  On the whole, the session leader just let us in the satellite group(s) just get on with it, unless we summoned help.  “Everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” as the down-to-earth folk of Wisconsin say.  These jobs were largely completed by tea-break.

The team working on clearing sections of ivy, which had potential to overhang the public right of way, had discovered (then re-covered) this Long-Tailed Tit’s nest: 

Site staff were able to tell us that the birds use lichen and cobwebs to construct these remarkable little homes.

                               

On the other side of the bridleway, vegetation either side of pathways for the local forest school had been cut back – a task requiring the volunteer to view the ground from PoV of user, and trim branches accordingly.  The trick in this situation is not to leave spikes ready to poke in the eye someone who is only 3-4’ high. 

Oh and a bramble bush was “rejuvenated”, ie razed to the ground, on the assurance that it will grow back with renewed vigour:

Going

Going

Gone

For our finale, all Green-Gymmers present on site joined together in scattering the wild flower seed, and wishing it well:

Today’s quiz: what’s this?  [Editor: I don’t know either.]

No cake?

A Wallingford-Green-Gym session without cake would be a contradiction in terms, wouldn’t it?

Well, some of us tried it today.  Not because it’s Lent and a power-crazed ‘C’ had finally flipped and decreed that because she is abstaining from food with added ingredient sugar, so must everyone else.  No: one of our other members had been having an “interesting” time experimenting with healthy food, and offered to bring along some of the results.  (She did actually bring some conventional cake too.)

There was something else different about today’s session: it was being covered by a post-graduate research student, who was investigating “the positive affect [sic] of nature on well-being.”  (‘Affect’ is neither typo nor spelling mistake, as I first thought when I saw it.  Apparently it’s all to do with the specialist terminology of the field.  ‘Field’: no pun intended.)  So today, Green-Gymmers were invited to fill in questionnaires before and after the session, to give a snapshot of mood:

“How ‘confused’ am I?”

“How ‘unworthy’ do I feel?”

‘Domine, non sum dignus’?

Participation in the study was entirely voluntary.  No-one had to do it, but in fact most of the Green-Gymmers were only too pleased to help.  Our umbrella organization (TCV) had given the project the go-ahead because the researcher would be in a position to share the results with TCV and those Green Gyms taking part, and it would l be “useful to provide further evidence on the link between health, well-being, and Green Gyms.”   

The questions had been formulated using subjective well-being methods, ie they related to how people felt.  We hoped that consumption of uncharacteristic healthy snacks would not skew the survey results!

Meanwhile, there was also some nature to observe with delight.  Here one of the trees we planted this winter, already beginning to come through:

And this was one of the views I had, while on log-carrying duty:

Yes, there was some work to be done today.  This was the warden’s reaction to having to tell us that it was not quite the task we had been expecting:

I think one might guess that the feeling she was experiencing at that point might have been a touch of embarrassment?  The fact was that because the rotavator had broken down, there was some serious digging to be done before ground could be prepared for cornfield-flower sowing.

Before that, however, there was a small ceremony to perform.  Note what appears to be 

a doily perched on top of one of the fence-posts we had sunk (and in the foreground, Green-Gymmer tooled up with mattock, eager to start work):

The ‘doily’ had been pre-positioned, so that there could be an unveiling ceremony – to reveal what might just be the smallest commemorative plaque in history (but which is no less welcome):

At last, volunteers could set to, with spades for turf-stripping …

and mattocks for breaking up and turning over the earth:

While other volunteers transported cast-out roots and sods to the heap for re-use elsewhere on site:

At yet another point on site, beside the river, volunteers waited patiently (and tried to keep warm) while a tree was felled.  Does the tree-feller look as if he might be experiencing a certain feeling of triumph?

Whether he was feeling exultant as the result of taking down the tree safely, or because he had done so without it promptly floating off downstream, is another matter.

It was then a question of using the cable (which only needed adjusting occasionally) 

to drag the tree on to dry land, where it could be sawn into logs and brash for Green-Gymmers to carry away:

And so to the end of the session when, having ploughed by hand, Green-Gymmers could scatter the good seed on the land:

This meant the session over-ran slightly, but it made all the difference to how satisfying it felt for participants.