Thursday 18th December 2025 - Today's task ended up being a test of endurance for the volunteers as they spent a soggy morning battling vegetation at Queen Marys Woodland.
Descending into the North-Eastern tip of the central woodland the light spitting rain matured to a steadier heavy bombardment as the day wore on.
With minimal shelter from the towering leafless deciduous tree's the team soaked up all they could take as they felled clusters of self-seeded Sycamore's, cleared a couple of bags worth of litter and significantly pushed back a tide of Bramble to rescue Tree whips planted about two years ago.
Tuesday 16th December 2025 - It was a truly mild day for the time of the year as a large team made preparations for the final taskday of the 2025 at Roundshaw Downs.
With a bigger split between the felling and harvesting of the old Blackthorn and the "thermal disposal" next Tuesday the volunteers once again amassed a staggering amount of material after of course a thorough check and mark up of Brown Hairstreak Butterfly eggs on newer growth.
Thursday 4th December 2025 - The coldness held off which could not be said for the constant drizzle from arrived in force from midday.
Managing to cover two site's on todays outing, a full strength team spent the first half of the day at Caraway Place where a light dredging to the pond got underway, a number of half fallen trees and stumps got felled and the usual tree tangling Bramble and patches of Nettles got pulled.
The final couple of hours of work had the team move to The Spinney where, although unphotographed, the team pushed their way along the central pathway clearing a tangled lattice of Bramble and brashing up a number of smaller trees that had come down since their last visit.
Tuesday 2nd December 2025 - Thankfully yesterdays miserable rain was nowhere in sight (apart from a couple of drizzly splashes later on!) as the team prepared to enter one of their messiest wetland sites, Kimpton Balancing Pond.
Fielding a fairly large and able team a number of preliminary tasks got carried out before the waders were pulled on.
Two of the team started out by walking the length of the site amassing the strewn litter to be found out in the open and hidden under the surrounding shrubbery, brushcutting was carried out to the edge of the pond to ease the extraction to come later and the final batch of the team divided up to thin out the scrub islands and pathside hedgeline trees.
With all the above attended to the final job was to enter the waters and to clear a channel through the Typha, including all their submerged and silt laden runners, and then wheel barrow after barrow of the claggy muck to the compost heap.
There are over 73,000 known tree species on the planet but only just over 100 native trees and shrubs in the UK and Ireland. Trees were around long before language, so it's no surprise that our native trees hold ancient stories, as do their names... The word ‘tree’ itself is considered to be o...
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