How to B Goode

By ‘C’:

A rock-star may have checked his watch mid-performance, or even in the middle of a number, to ensure he would not over-run his contracted time by so much as a minute.  Green-Gymmers have been known not even to keep an eye on the time for tea-break.

There have also been occasions when volunteers have kept going after the official end of a session, in order to get a job finished.  This was one of them!  Having been so absorbed they had already run over into ‘overtime’, some workers stayed on a quarter hour longer to get one job to the point where it could safely be left to be another day:

Abstract art - or what?  Read on to find out ...

It was good to see that spring had come to ‘our’ location in Didcot: Mowbray Fields.  Come summer, whole sections will be a riot of floral colour. 

We also found there had been a few changes in layout since we were last there.  One gap in the circle of vegetation around the fill-pond area had been opened up further:

View to fill-pond area from above

View from below, towards nearby housing estate

A good sight-line between Mowbray Fields recreation ground and Mowbray Fields nature reserve encourages a wider range of members of the public to make more extensive and more responsible use of the open-access area.

Elsewhere, another gap had been plugged:

We surmise that the opening in the hedge had been used rather too often as a short-cut.

It was a double-task today.  One was “the spring cut and rake of the meadow” – which meant the warden had cut, with power-tool; and volunteers raked, with virtuous hand-tools:

The alternative task was to continue with replacing the chicken-wire on the ‘hexag’ boardwalk with staples:

Chicken-wire, freshly laid over wooden boards, may be a good anti-slip device.  Old chicken-wire, however, which has started to fray, can turn into a trip hazard.  Fencing staples, hammered in, give just as good grip, while being easier to maintain. 

The long-term project to replace the chicken-wire at this location was begun – by us – last summer, with interesting percussive results.  (No well-known composer need roll over for the Green-Gym experimental sound workshop!)  This time, having learned from experience, workers came up with some new techniques.  As one of the pioneering pair, who worked on this all morning, cheerfully explained, “John is a parallel hammerer …”

 “whereas I am a serial hammerer”:

After the caffeine and dextrose rush of tea-break, there were further refinements to the staples-for-chicken-wire programme.  Rather than guess how large an area of chicken-wire to pull up before applying the staples, one volunteer had the bright idea of hammering the staples inside the holes formed by the wire:

The redundant wire could then be removed at a later point, in workers’ own good time.

How best to accomplish that removing of old wire was also the subject of some pilot schemes.  (Green-Gymmers always ambitious to be good.)  In the end, it was decided the workers had already come up with the best method: brute force and ignorance.  Which was just as well, for owing to a communication breakdown, there was rather more chicken-wire to remove before close of play than had been intended.

Meantime, those wielding the rakes, pitchforks, and tarpaulin had completed their task.  Some joined the hammering workshop; others moved on to cutting back vegetation which would otherwise rapidly overgrow the public footpath once spring is into its running.  And finally, there was time for “testing the public-viewpoint facility”:

Green-Gym Allsorts

By the Session Leader:

A return to Millbrook Mead after just two weeks, for a nice mixture of jobs, and correspondingly a nice mix of before and after pics.

The biggest job was repairing the frame of the boardwalk.  This we had hoped to do last time, only the materials had not arrived.  This time, our engineers were not to be denied:

Before

During: “Spot on!”

After

Only one passer-by decided that the ‘Path Closed’ sign did not apply to her.  Not that her dog minded!

The last of the willows was pollarded – just in time before nesting season is in full swing:

Before

After

Some more of the brash was burned:

This put to the test a new item of clothing, which had been bought on the grounds that it was advertised as ‘flameproof’:

During the morning, the top became liberally sprinkled with hot ashes, which left not a single hole in the fabric, but left instead one very pleased unburnt gymmer.

 

Elsewhere on site, a stream was uncovered:

Before

After

Some gymmers needed a little assistance to escape from the sticky sucky mud.

The site welcome-&-information-board had its weed carpet lifted, and the base made ready once again for planting with wild flowers:

Before

After

And another two bucket-loads of whips were planted, thus extending the area that we planted last time:

Just a fortnight after our previous visit, and already there were more flowers to be seen around the ‘gym’.  Here some hellebores flourishing in the neighbouring gravel garden:

And here, some flower beginning with a ‘b’, whose name we knew at the start, but could we remember it at tea time?  

Someone’s brain spluttered into life eventually, and we got the name back – only for it to be forgotten again!  [‘Butterbur’?  The name of the plant, that is, not a description of the state of a Green-Gymmer’s brain after a hard work-out. – Ed.]

Altogether, a most productive morning, as well as an enjoyable one.

Smart and not-so smart moves

By the Session Leader:

The warning that the car park was likely to be muddy wasn’t quite right: it was just pools of brown water with patches of bare earth. 

Nevertheless, we managed to park without getting soaked.

At this point, the leader’s camera decided its battery was flat.  Never mind: use phone instead.  Little did he know.

A very pleasant and easy task to start with.  A different volunteer had already cut back the overgrown trees that lined the edge of the field that borders the road between the Wittenhams.  [The South Oxfordshire villages of Long Wittenham and Little Wittenham. – Ed.]  All his cuttings were lying in the field, but needed to be thrown over the wire fence on to the roadside ready to be picked up by another worker, with a trailer, at a later date.

So: a gentle stroll along the sheep-mown grass, stopping every few yards to toss cuttings into piles over the fence.  There were many stops, and it was a long walk that took till coffee time.  It was obviously going to be an easy day ...

After coffee, a very different task.  Along another edge of the field, a hawthorn hedge runs under a row of 11KV electricity poles.  As the hawthorn was growing close to the wires, the Electricity Board had come along and cut them (the hawthorn, not the poles) down to 3’, and almost ruined the hedge.  All the cut wood had been put though a chipper, and the chippings piled around the base of the trees.

To make the hedge effective again, the hawthorn needed to be chain-sawn to the base so that it would regrow into a dense thicket.  So the piles of chippings had to be cleared away to ground level so that the chain saw could get close to the base.

At this point other volunteers with smarter phones started to take photos, just in case:

This task was not so easy: this is where the exercise came in.  A variety of methods were used.  Spades were best where there was room to get them between the trees:

Forks could get between the thinner shoots: 

When all else failed, then down on one’s knees and scrape with gloved hands:

Boots were quite effective too.

The sun had come out, we had warmed up, and we had cleared most of the length of hedge.  This is what it looked like when ready for the chain saw:

It was only when the photographer got home that he discovered that his not so smart phone was not recognized by his PC.  So his twelve photos of the day stay out of sight.  The ones you see are from two members with smarter phones.