Berries galore

 I’m not too sure what poetry John Keats might have written in a time of climate breakdown, but so far at least there is little sign of his season of mists. The mellow fruitfulness is nowhere near as fruitful as it should be either, although hawthorn locally is a notable exception. This year’s glut of berries is perhaps just reflecting that for that plant at least the spring and early summer was good for it. There was a lot of blossom and plenty of pollinators in May so although we then had drought it would have got off to a good start, and with sufficiently deep roots it presumably found enough water to make the berries.

Another poetic John – Clare – started his ‘A Autumn Morning’ with “The autumn morning waked by many a gun…” and that has a very familiar ring to it, even after all these years. Meanwhile in Selborne back in 1781 Gilbert White was worried about the drought that was affecting the area, with wells drying up everywhere. Presumably reservoirs were not yet a thing, so dry wells will have represented quite a problem. Luckily, they didn’t have hosepipes either! He will also have been wrestling with the problem of where swallows and other birds of summer go at this time of year, not yet understanding the wonder of migration. On that topic, I saw my first redwings of the winter thrush influx yesterday.

Today, breaking with my usual practice of arriving on time for a working party I arrived uncharacteristically early; perhaps as much as ten minutes before the advertised start time. This coincided with the arrival of the redoubtable Noel, who greeted me with “If you’re here at the same time as me, I must be late” – rude! Anyway, 15 volunteers turned out to clear away material that had been cut previously. We’ve actually had some rain lately, meaning of course that the cut stuff was still wet, but fortunately not too heavy, and at least today the rain stayed away. In fact, from a chilly start the day just got better and better – almost too warm for comfortable working by midday.

Work was straightforward today: basically just raking or pitchforking material onto drag sheets…

… and tipping the sheets out at the dump site, accompanied by much good-natured banter.

Inevitably the mounds of dumped material grew, and your correspondent found himself at the summit of one such eminence, and thus able to look down on his colleagues.

We were dumping in a pleasantly bosky area, which particularly with the sunlight streaming through the branches was attractive enough to merit a photo of its own.

As previously described, ad nauseum, it is here that the work takes on some of the character of a music quiz, always featuring songs from several decades ago – even though nostalgia is not as good as it used to be. Today we started with Nowhere to Run from Martha Reeves & The Vandellas following a tricky moment when one of us was in danger of being trapped as a sheet was tipped out (NOT an uncommon occurrence). Tipping out sheets is an art in itself, best achieved when the sheet almost forms into a ball as it rolls over. This led to speculation about whether it could indeed fully encase its load and be rolled for some distance. Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ then rang out at the dump site, enthusiastically performed by those who remember it from the ancient TV Western Rawhide starring a young Clint Eastwood. So many of our number still resemble Clint… More recently, it featured in the excellent film Blood Brothers, starring John Belushi. Some of our number still resemble John…

For no reason that I at least can remember, the penultimate offering in this set was Blame it on the Boogie from The Jacksons. Finally, as we were summoned to the mid-morning refreshments, Bob Dylan’s One More Cup of Coffee seemed the appropriate offering.

Here is the assembled company enjoying that break.

At this stage all sorts of friends, family and random interlopers magically appeared, but there was by then hardly any of Nina’s legendary Apple Cake left.

Back to work, and at one point we were also joined by this little frog.

At the end of the session the area looked like this 

Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks:

Good afternoon

I hope you are all enjoying the lovely sunshine today - it was certainly a lovely day to be working on the common.

Our thanks go to the 15 volunteers who worked on the common today clearing the reed cut earlier in the week. Thanks also go to the Grizzly operators who did the pre-cut for us - often the unsung heroes!

We cleared a big area today, aided by the fact that the arisings are reasonably light in the area we were working on!  We were also powered on by half time apple cake provided by Dave in Nina's absence - and a great job he did too!

We will return in two weeks to finish the remaining area not done today.  

Thanks again

Regards, Julie

Walking past the Pit a couple of days ago, I saw that it has been much changed. A few weeks ago, all the reeds and other vegetation clogging it up had been cut and left in heaps in it. Now they’re all gone, and by the look of it the awful clogging Crassula helmsii has been scraped out too. The heavy machinery involved has made a bit of a mess of the grassy area, including the wildflower section, but that should recover in short order. Almost certainly, some Crassula will have evaded the scraping, so it’s likely to try to re-colonise the pond. We are therefore highly likely to be called to arms to try to prevent it gaining another foothold: watch this space!