Spring Smörgåsbord

Reportage by the session leader and other photographers:

Numerous ‘small’ jobs today instead of one big one.  Centre of operations was the area overlooking the famous pond site – ‘famous’ because it was entirely renovated by us in our biggest project to date.

First job was to set up a new bench for the public to rest on.   Premade, it was massive to lift to where it was to live:

The legs were very long, but like an iceberg, would be largely out of sight.  Two-thirds of the legs were to be buried below ground.

Naturally, that meant digging two very deep holes.  Not easy with such stony ground and remains of old stumps to extract:

By tea-break the new furniture was in place.  The test-driver announced it was “perfect”:

The chief hole-digger was also able to take a rest, this time on the nearby conveniently shaped tree, the warden’s favourite:

The next task at that location: to protect a tree from itchy cows, who thought it ideal for scratching their backs.  Rather over-long fence posts were positioned around the tree …

then dug and thumped into place at an elegant angle.  The top cross bars were then screwed on to the posts, and the ends trimmed: 

More cross bars and barbed wire are still to be added.  That’s a task for the next group of volunteers who’ll be working at the site.

Meanwhile, another team of Green-Gymmers had been taking a stroll around most of Castle Meadows to set up an electric fence in this area, out of bounds to the cows:

That was not much exercise, so they had to collect a pile of logs …

and load them onto the trailer …

only to offload them elsewhere and turn them into a demonstration log-pile for the family wildlife day on site tomorrow: 

Finally, another area was strimmed by the warden, with power tool.  The cuttings had to be raked up into neat piles, with trad hand tools:

With all these tasks we had little time to admire the Meadows in full flush of spring flowers.

Double rations

Compiled from the records made by the respective session leaders:

Two lovely days to report on.  Both very dry.  Both involving vegetation surplus to requirements + bonfire.

First, the session last week (4 April): a less strenuous task than usual.  As anticipated, three large piles of brash left from a hedge-laying course were waiting to be burned.   

This did not involve quite as much work as usual, because they were positioned right beside the fire site.  This was just one of the heaps:

Even lighting the fire was going to be easier than usual, as the warden had brought two broken bales of straw to burn to get the fire going:

Indeed it did not take long to get a good blaze – one large enough that the brash did not have to be cut up, but could be thrown straight on the fire:

Even the locals stop for a tea break:

At the end all three piles had completely disappeared:

We even had time to stand and watch the fire burn out:

Today (11 April), we were, as is usual for Green Gym, at a different site.  Following weekend temperatures which had seemed remarkably high for England in April, nature was – in many spots – much further advanced.  On the way to our morning’s session, many of us noticed the bluebells beginning their woodland-floor display:

The task was similar to the previous week’s, in the sense that once again we were dealing with great piles of cuttings …

This time, however, the cuttings were fresh.  And they were ones which we ourselves were producing.

This forbidding mass of bramble and scrub was our target:

The particular reason why it had to go (“now before the birds get too far ahead with nesting”) was that it was blocking an all-important sight-line, from the high pasture down to the corner gate.  Important to sheep, that is.  They do not like being moved in a direction which looks to them like a dead end.

Before any flames could be kindled today, a glade had to be cleared around an old fire-site first.  This lay at the centre of the thicket.  Having negotiated the one narrow entrance to the middle of the thicket, some volunteers then had to start creating a fire-break:

The fire itself had to be painstakingly put together from smaller starting materials …

and grew only slowly:

It was still barely in its infancy by tea-break.

Our break was held beneath a most handsome whitebeam (Sorbus Aria).  At first sight, it looked as if it was coming into flower:

On closer examination, we could see that its decoration was the foliage coming into bud.  It is the leaves with their distinctive white underside which give the species its name:

As it happens, the blossom, which will appear later, is also white.  In former times, the tree was particularly prized not so much for its beauty as for the hardness of its wood: good for making cog wheels, for instance.

Progress seemed more rapid in the second half of the session, if only because those working on the thicket from the outside, working their way towards the centre, ‘broke through’ and met up with those on the inside of the circle, who were still working in the opposite direction.  This week, the fire had to be ‘shut down’ before we had burned all the brash which had been generated:

Where we left off, our colleagues from Sonning Common GG will continue.  Even so, many of us were pleasantly surprised by just how much ground we had cleared.  Here volunteers are putting the finishing touches to our work:

This had been the view from the higher ground beforehand:

Now the gate was clearly visible:

 

As we packed up, and trudged back to our vehicles (uphill, of course!) we could reflect that it had indeed been a good morning’s work:

Spring Break

By ‘C’:

“Bonfire!” was the rallying call of the session scheduled for today.

– Unless volunteers have a blind date with the rain, of course.  (Which would be seriously abnormal for Green Gym.)  For the task was to help “get rid of some of the brash generated by the past winter’s hedge laying”: perfectly normal behaviour for this time of year in the English countryside.  Below is fond souvenir of the equivalent task in a previous year, at a slightly different spot at the (large) site:

Same job essentially: April 2015

The site is near, indeed in many places overlooks, the most “normal” town in the country.  Where having a great bonfire of brash from a winter’s hedge-laying would not be normal behaviour at all. 

View of then full complement of cooling towers, Didcot, from Earth Trust Wittenham, May 2014

Apparently, Didcot is the most “normal” town in England, in the sense that some of its streets have been found by a group of statisticians to furnish a close match with national-average lifestyle, opinions, and experiences.  Why those findings should be described as “tremendous”, is up for debate.  (As is how long the place might remain a “microcosm of Britain” if descended on by hordes of researchers and policymakers wanting to get a handle on “normal”.)  One suspects Green-Gymmers would not think of themselves as the most “normal” people in the country, on grounds that ‘normal’/’average’ can mean teansy-weansy bit boring.  But then I am not sure any of them do hail from the “magic town”.

The WGG blog itself is taking a bit of a spring break.  Normal service should be resumed next week.