Happy Guinea Pigs

By C

It is an autumnal phenomenon we have seen before, but one not yet fully explained.  Why should there be a fall in the number of women volunteers at WGG in the couple of months leading up to Christmas?

Over the weekend, numbers replying to say YES to the invitation to the session were slow to pick up, even though it was for one of our favourite places: the Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve.  I was beginning to wonder if this week we would be:

      The Finest Five, or
            The Scintillating Six?

                  The Splendid Seven?  (we’d been the Magnificent Seven before)

                        The Amazing Eight …

In the end, there were seven of us, gathered under a grey sky.  Still, it was remarkably mild for the time of year.  And better than it had been the day before (Mon 14 November) – which was when there was supposed to have been a ‘supermoon’, aka perigee-syzygy of the Earth-moon-sun system.  Not just any old supermoon, but the biggest and brightest and best in 70 years, the like of which will not be seen again until 25 November 2034.

The supermoon will have been there, of course.  Just not visible from South Oxfordshire, for the celestial scenery had been successively changed from ‘partly cloudy’ to plain ‘cloudy’, then to ‘overcast’.  The best view of the almost-supermoon (a ‘hunter’s moon’, it being November) was Sunday evening.  The sky was almost clear then, except for periods when the wispiest of cloud led to one of those interesting optical phenomena:

Not-quite- supermoon (you can tell my camera is hand held!)

Very-nearly-supermoon with aureole

I think that is what is known as a corona: caused by diffraction of light by tiny water droplets/ice crystals suspended high in the air.  The difference in colouration of the aureole (ice-blue shading over to orangey brown) might be due to the different wavelengths of light – like in a rainbow, where light in the visible spectrum is refracted from violet/blue on the inside to red on the outside?

Anyway, today – Tuesday – the weather was behaving in an un-Green-Gym like manner:

The task, however, was classic Green-Gym-on-Chilterns-chalk-grassland: cutting back invasive scrub, to try and maintain/extend the grass and wildflower coverage; and burning.  With the added bonus this week of meeting one of the Senior Reserve Managers, and getting to trial a new piece of kit.  This is a ‘Tree Popper’, which has come all the way from South Africa:

It may sound like one of those (now illegal) ‘legal highs’.  But actually it is like a heavy-duty staple remover – for pulling out small trees. 

“It works!” was the delighted reaction of one of the first to try out the new piece of kit.  Further trial and error revealed that it works best on saplings rather than “multi-stems”.  When it came to the regrowth of older trees, which had been cut back last season (by us), there was still plenty of scope for brute force and ignorance to finish the job:

“Proof that SRMs do occasionally get out and work on-site!”

Tackling the brambles, on the other hand, was a task for handtools + determination.  That was a return to familiar routines of attacking with a pair of shears …

or slasher (note the juniper berries in the foreground) ...

carrying away the cut stuff with a fork …

and not killing the flame:

Thus for large portions of the morning it was a question of either kneeling, or testing the back:

Which meant that tea-break – with a shiny landrover bonnet for use as a serving-table – was extra specially welcome.  Provisions included cake and ‘pumpkins’:

Conserving chalk-grassland habitat is one of those never-ending tasks.  But good exercise, and it got us outside on a dull day when it would have been very easy to moulder indoors – and we rather enjoyed being tree-popper guinea-pigs.

Every shade of autumn

“A frosty start with some brightness” was how the Met Office described this morning.  

With regard to the first part of the day, that was something of an understatement? 

The sky was crisp and clear at dawn – with a temperature of -3 Celsius to match. 

The combination of frost, autumnal foliage, and golden sunlight made almost any old field look magical:

The frost made everything beautiful, even common weeds:

By the time we got to our working spot on the far side of Wittenham Clumps, however, the frost had gone, and the sky had clouded over.  So we looked to see what work was in store for us:

It was coppicing of these trees.  Not as big as some we had tackled in the past, but plenty of them:

We spread out far apart, but with instructions to avoid demolishing these protected youngsters:

Plenty of exercise sawing trees down, and then cutting them up!  So tea, coffee, and cake were much appreciated:

Meanwhile, some had it easy:

The end result: piles of logs …

piles of stakes …

piles of brash …

and satisfied workers:

Only left for the site warden to carry off some of the stakes and fencing ties:

Meeting in a Mist

By C

Now this would have been the weather for today:

Glorious!  If it were like that for All Saints, there’d be no complaints.

Unfortunately, that golden warmth and the scent of fresh-mown grass were yesterday afternoon: Hallowe’en.  Ha!  Today, 1 November, started misty and mysterious: ideal for evoking a sense of the mildly spooky or alchemist-y?  By session-start, climatic conditions had evolved into the merely dark and dank.  Still mild, though (“a good temperature to be working in”) and not, of course, nearly comparable to the murk experienced elsewhere in the world.

With every excuse to be a slightly dispirited bunch of saints-under-construction this morning, Green-Gymmers were commendably determined not to let the mood be de-railed by a spell of inopportune weather.  A slate of tasty tasks helped, plus the new-experience value of our first session at this site under the direction of the new warden-team.  Our new boss (when we’re at this site: Anne Carpmael Charitable Trust) definitely believes in leading from the front:

These were the tasks in hand today – a nice range, so that all participants could find the right level and variety of exercise for them:

҉   Improving visitor-access

The target here was a new path between bridleway and study centre.  The project had been started by another group: they had got as far as laying scalpings, but that section still needed the top surface adding.  There was also scope to widen the path-line for easier wheelchair-access.  That involved first of all a lot of digging …

then placing carpet, scalpings, and top layer:

Finally the new surface was levelled, to put the finishing touch on a “really neat” job …

and proud workers (well some of them) assembled for a rare posed Green-Gym portrait:

҉   Habitat construction

The aim was to build a reptile bank in the otherwise under-used patch of ground between the back of the study centre and the railway embankment.  This too involved first of all a lot of digging:

The first phase of construction was to hollow out a large pit – stripping the turf, then excavating the soil – and filling in the hole with a layer of rubble, then logs:

The second phase – which drew in Green-Gymmers from the other tasks – was to cover over with earth, and top with turf:

“Bronze-age burial mound” or “snakarium”?

The plot had been carefully marked out so that the side with entrance-points faces south.  So that it can be warmed by the sun.  When there is any.

Both of those jobs involved much transporting and handling of materials.  This made for an excellent opportunity for one volunteer to try out a new pair of good thick (dragonhide?) gloves:

The third task, which some volunteers alternated with other jobs, was:

҉   Weeding

This may not sound attractive, but ‘weeding’ here meant working in one of the woodland areas, and removing unwanted/excess sycamore seedlings:

That a wizard time was had by all, is no mystery.  And the forecast for tomorrow is for it to be like this: