December 2018 - January 2019
No matter that Louise The Grand Dauphine found the
sight of a ha-ha amusing, clearing out a year’s accumulation of wet leaves really
isn’t a great deal of fun. Mind you, the landed gentry probably didn’t have to do
it themselves. For us it could have been worse. So many times in past years we
have stood gradually sinking into mulch and mud, shovelling out soggy leaves
into dump bags; their weight requiring three grown people to heave them onto
the back of a truck. But it had been freezing overnight and still minus three
while we worked. The leaves were frosted crisp and white, and – because it had scarcely
rained in weeks – dry. With a full set of rangers and a good turnout of
Wednesday volunteers, the job was done in record time. But, at Gibside, there’s
always something else to do.
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| Frost balls |
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| Snow shovels are really useful for clearing the leaves |
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| Leaf piles ready for bagging |
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| Almost finished |
We were back to brash clearing in the West Wood. Piling
up row upon row of branches, twigs, rotted leaves and some quite substantial
logs – the leftovers of clear felling – untangled by hand from a woven mass
often two feet or more deep. We have found a few creatures here as we’ve worked
but, up until recently, it has been a bleak and barren landscape unappealing to
man or mouse. Now that we’ve cleared much of the ground, we’ve planted trees –
hundreds of them, nearly all hazel. Bit by bit the landscape is morphing into
fields of stakes and tubes. It shouldn’t take long though for the hazel
saplings to emerge from their protective plastic, and for the unsightly dead
hedges we’ve created to rot down and become overgrown. Indeed, other plants are already recolonising
this temporary desert – holly, chickweed, foxgloves, and birch of course.
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| Frozen foxgloves |
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| Training session in progress |
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| Planting hazels |
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| A completed section of hazel planting |
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| A welcome cuppa |
We’ve left gaps in the dead hedges to create route
ways so as not to make life too difficult for the larger mammals that live
around here – badger, brown hare, roe deer. And the hedges should quite nicely
accommodate smaller mammals, and toads and assorted creepy-crawlies.
The Forestry Commission crop removed from this site
was nearly all western hemlock. They took the timber, but the cones and seeds that
they left behind will only too soon become seedlings, which will have to come
out. That should keep us busy.
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| Cup lichen ( Cladonia fibriata) |
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| Moss - Polytrichum sp. |
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| Lunch for two |
Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne
