Much grass!

By one of the session volunteers:

Mowbray Fields is a favourite site for some of the tasks there, but not necessarily for today’s job.  We had wondered how many of us there would be today. 

Raking cut grass is not the most popular task.  [Especially not at that particular site – Ed.]  In the event, however, it was a good turnout, and a session which many of us enjoyed much more than we expected. 

To keep the neighbours happy, we were able to park our cars on the site rather than by the side of the congested approach-road.

There was a lot of meadow-cut to be gathered, as the grass on the wild flower meadow had grown prolifically this year. 

Yesterday, the site warden had managed to cut about 80% of the area, before the machine broke down!  Today, site warden was at the wheel of the ever-dependable landie – at the start of the session, manoeuvring the trailer to alongside where the workers would be, for ease of loading:

The Green-Gymmers were, of course, equipped with the traditional tools for this purpose:

 

The task didn’t seem so great at first.

As the raking got under way, however, the rolls of grass got bigger and heavier.  Not that this seemed to dampen Green-Gymmers’ spirits:

Some volunteers developed a positively balletic technique:

As the rakers rolled it up, the pitchforkers took each consignment, and loaded it on to the trailer:

From time to time, the trailer was driven down to the bottom of the site to be offloaded beside the compost heap, then stacked on to the heap – more manual labour required.

As the session progressed, there was discussion about using sheep to keep the grass under control as the royal parks are doing. 

Some of the local wildlife was not pleased at our disrupting their territory, and escaped as soon as possible.

Our agile warden rescued another, and – pausing only for a quick photoshoot - took it to a place of safety.

By the end of the session three trailer-loads had been gathered, transported, offloaded, and stacked.  That amounted to about two-thirds of what had been cut,
so most of the meadow had been cleared:

It had been good and satisfying exercise for us, and the weather warm, but not sunny – just right.  For that we were very thankful.  Unfortunately we didn’t manage to find the lost bolt from the machine.

All Safely Gathered in, Mother?

By the session leader:

A glorious session today in the wildflower meadow above Brightwell cum Sotwell.  

We were pulling out ragwort and creeping thistle, of which there is less and less in the meadow each year.  Looking out across the meadow and watching the volunteers at work, it looked like we were idly wandering through the meadow gathering flowers.  Idyllic.

The only hazard: occasionally having to be careful where you put your feet.

Can you put names to the flowers in these photos?  (And identify which one of these was a target for removal?)  Answers below – I hope I’ve got them right!   

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1.       Purple Selfheal

2.       Mallow

3.       Knapweed and Oxeye Daisy

4.       Bird’s Foot Trefoil

5.       Ladies’ Bedstraw

6.       Black Medic

7.       Wild Parsnip?

8.       Scabious

9.       Pyramid Orchids

10.   Wild Liquorice

11.   Agrimony

12.   Teasel

13.   St John’s Wort

14.   Creeping Thistle – remove!

15.   Woolly Thistle

If it was hard enough to photograph all the plant species (and I know I didn’t get them all), it was even harder to capture images of all the butterflies and grasshoppers and other insect life.  They will keep moving around!  And blending in against the background.  

A Marble White on what by now all readers will confidently identify as Knapweed

There's a Marble White there somewhere!

A Meadow Brown demonstrating why it is called that

By the end, our idle meadow-wandering, up and down the steep slope in the heat, had given us our gym work-out – and our appetite for the AGM. 

How can one have an appetite for an All-Safely-Gathered-in-Mother?  (aka Annual General Meeting, which is such a feature of British social life.)  Well, read on!

Elucidation from C:

Yes, it’s true: after the session today, people voluntarily stayed on for a meeting.  No, not that kind of meeting, I mean the kind of meeting you’d want to go to.  With friends, over lunch at a nearby hostelry – that being the way we do our AGMs.

I had arrived first, to get set up.  When the clock got round to 1.20, and still no-one else had appeared, it was beginning to feel a bit like another meeting of the Shadow Cabinet:

A few ships short of a fleet

Though I did reflect that wherever it is that the Shadow Cabinet does meet, is not likely to feature a poster with an advertisement like this:

Then they all arrived at once.  Green-Gymmers, that is, not members of the Labour front-bench team.  And we had our meeting.  As between friends.  With lunch.   

And a quiz.