The right kind of tree

By the Session Leader:

Trees were our business today, but not all of them seasonal.

In the morning, Earth Trust needed us at their arboretum to do some “weeding”.

Weeding?  They meant: taking out ash saplings – a whole forest of them.

Those saplings had to be harvested, in order to give space for the cricket-bat willows (salix alba), which grow twice as fast as their neighbouring bay willows (salix pentandra).  With loppers and saws, we made short work of that:

Here is some ash suffering from ash dieback – a fungal disease, which makes diamond-shaped lesions in the bark before starving the leaves:  

Most of the ash at this location is healthy.

Conversation, much of it looking back to the start of Christmas and New Year, drifted into glass-half-empty-or-half-full mode.  We decided every team needs its “snagger and rubbisher”, but not all the time please.  Let’s have some bright sparks too!

The catkins were just coming into fruit in the sun.  [Has anyone told them snow is on the way, if the wind veers to the north as forecast? – Ed.]  Catkin-bearing plants are varied, including birch, willow, hickory, sweet chestnut and sweetfern (Comptonia).

Before long, we had cut down great swathes of ash, leaving the stumps to be ‘glyphosated’ later.  [Not by Green-Gymmers, of course, but by Earth-Trust staff licensed to ‘paint’ stumps. – Ed.]

We had also broken a pathway through the copse to the reveal the landrover and the tea crate.  Wonderful “PanaTony” and chocolate cake today.

Here is how not to store the tools, with saw-blade and billhook nicely positioned to take out carefree passers-by:

After tea, we all turned to producing binders.  To qualify for this use, rods had be minimum 2 metres long, and whippy-thin for weaving in and out of laid hedges:

The binders were bundled into batches of 20:

We also made stakes out of the thicker trunks, precisely 5’8” long and bundled into 10s:

And after all that: time for the Green-Gym seasonal celebrations.  Staff at the pub, who put on a splendid spread, had also very sweetly left up the Christmas tree, just for us:

Inglorious Mud

By the Session Leader:

The dog walkers this morning thought we were mad when they heard that we Green-Gymmers were going to be working yet again in the “icy” waters of the watercress beds. 

They could well think that if they saw the wintry scene that greeted us at Ewelme:

Iced up walkways seemed to present a real slip hazard:

What they would not have known is that the water temperature was little different to normal, just right for the ducks:

Also, the sloping parts of the walkway were well protected with netting:

So the team dived in to the two tasks:

• removing the cress that had previously been piled on the concrete bunds
• digging out all of the cress from the first pond

– From this, you would not immediately guess that much of our work today revolved around mud, removal of.  Mud: variously translated by our volunteers as boue and грязь.

Unfortunately, both tasks required the use of the one bund to wheel away the cress.   

With twelve members working [a good seasonal number: one for each of the days of Christmas – Ed.] there was the likelihood of a traffic jam.  Some simple organization, however, got a remarkably smooth operation going. 

One group dug out the watercress and mud from the pond, which had frozen underneath:

“At least when it’s frozen, the mud slices!”

They carried the mud and cress over to waiting wheel barrows on the bund, while a second team, on the left, walked past them to collect [chip away with an axe – Ed.] the cress that was further down on the bund, and which had frozen in place:

The wheelbarrowers alternated loads along the wooden walkway:

Cress barrow …

mud barrow, cress barrow ...

At the walkway, a third team was ready to exchange full barrows for empties …

and wheel them away up the hill …

to our compost-heap master, who was building what appeared to be a fortress …

watched keenly by one of the locals:

Because we know that Christmas-tide is by no means over, our tea-break was treated to a first, a foreign Xmas goody with an unpronounceable name, and a delicious almond filling:

[Until after the Second World War, Spekulatius/Speculaas was a luxury food-item, hand-crafted with fresh cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves; and consumed only at this time of year.  Typically, in Holland/Belgium/Germany, from the Feast of St Nicholas (Sinterklaas / St. Niklaas / Sankt. Klaus: 6 Dec) to Epiphany (6 Jan) or – if feeling flush – right through to Candlemas (2 Feb).  These days, in Central Europe, they are widely available in supermarkets year-round.  You can tell the Green-Gym specimens were mass-produced and bought from a British shop because – although very handsome – they were not made in a traditional mould. – Ed.] 

Meanwhile, to demonstrate the versatility of Green Gymmers, today’s mechanic was cannibalising two broken wheelbarrows into one by removing a good wheel from a broken barrow, and fitting it to a good barrow with broken wheel:

By the end the bund was clear, and the first bed cleared.  The bed was then raked over.  Yes, another first for WGG!  Raking water, with the prongs of the rake either way up: 

The idea was to move as much as possible of the residual mud downstream, for it to settle against the barrier, and be removed later.

Finally, a scrape with a spade to leave the bed ready for replanting:

What?  Replanting?  That means we will be starting all over again next year!