A Garland of Bindweed

 Sunday 13th being the last day before the new legal restriction on social gatherings to no more than six people came into force, this working party was able to consist of at several more than the ‘rule of six’ with a clear conscience. We are waiting for a definitive ruling from NWT on permissible numbers for future sessions: this is not as obvious as it seems, but it looks likely that as what we do is socially distanced voluntary work for a charity we will be allowed to continue in the way we have been organising ourselves. A couple of other exemptions, for sports and religion, are also attractive, or if things get really sticky we could perhaps instead arrange a wedding for each session. We should perhaps avoid calling our sessions ‘working parties’ as that will throw the whole thing into even deeper confusion. How about ‘working matches’, or ‘working services’?

On 13^th September in 1768, Gilbert White noted “Ravens are continually playing by pairs in the air.” None here sadly, but we can manage the odd crow. In 1771 it was “Grapes begin to turn colour”, and in 1773 he saw that there were “Young swallows in the nest.” In 1789 he reported on “Several nests of Goldfinches, with fledged young”. Meanwhile here and now, there are excellent numbers of Glow-worms lighting up The Common, perhaps unseasonably late in the year. The sightings whiteboard at the Information Point reveals that at least 100 were recorded late in the evening of 9^th; it must have been an exciting sight.

As has been the necessary pattern lately, preliminary work for Sunday’s session was done on Saturday morning. More Alders were asked to leave Area B (half of the grassy open part beside Warren Road), whilst the Grizzly chopped through the remaining uncut vegetation. Here is the resultant pile of now horizontal saplings, with the ‘tree popper’ used to hoick them out taking a well-earned rest beside them.

Almost immediately after that picture was taken the Grizzly chopped through a wasps’ nest. Quite unreasonably the stripey-jumpered inhabitants objected in the best way they knew how, and John beat a hasty retreat, firmly telling them to ‘buzz off’ or something similar. He was fortunately stung only once, on his heel, but that was more than enough; he shall henceforth be known as Achilles. The upshot was that the area guarded by the wasps had to be excluded from the otherwise comprehensive clearance of that section in Sunday’s main event.

 

Your usual correspondent being on the bench for this fixture, Team Leader Julie again takes up the story:

We had a lovely day for our work party today with blue skies and sunshine.

We were working up near Warren Road and yesterday’s preparation and pre-cut team had set up a winching site part way down, as we need a longer rope to winch all the way down to the dump sites we used last week. With the shorter pulls we were loading the sheets less, winching them to the dump site and the two people guiding the sheets were able to roll them onto the heaps without needing to use the winch for that part of the operation. It was all very efficient!

There was a lot of bindweed tangled in with the reed today making it quite hard to pick up at times. It was noted that all the parcels of reed were wrapped in a garland of bindweed!

 We had our customary break at half time and all caught up on the latest news ... 

Following the break we sent an elite team round the corner to tackle the cut reed in the scrub area we cleared last year. We opted to hand pull these sheets rather than move the winch.

 

Everyone had to be careful in this area as our poor Grizzly operator yesterday disturbed a wasp nest and spent the evening nursing a swollen leg.  We cordoned the area off with red tape and kept a safe distance away!

Eventually the last load was on its way on the main site... 

...and with reinforcements then sent to finish the old scrub area we were soon done for the day. As Margaret said in her thank you note - looking from the boardwalk over towards what was scrub last year people can see further than they have for 20 years... I think all the Southrepps Commons Volunteers past and present can give themselves a huge pat on the back for the work done here.

The boardwalk was busy this morning with people enjoying our Common! (Sadly no Alpacas this week though.)

The end product today:

Here is the Team Leaders’ message of thanks:

Thank you to everyone who came this morning. We were blessed with a beautiful dry bright morning at just about the right temperature. We have completed all the cutting in area B and thanks to the work done last winter you can now see further through the fen than has been seen for 20 years. That's a clumsy sentence but I think you get the drift. Social distancing does make a difference and it was a while before the chatter picked up, but we managed.

Thank you all so much for helping to make all this work, your support for the commons is just brilliant. Julie is getting guidance from NWT to see how the new 'rule of six' affects us so we will keep you posted but we hope to run two more working parties in September on the 20th and 27th so watch out for her emails.

 Enjoy the rest of the day and stay safe.

Best wishes from the Team Leaders.