Tuesday was once more at Dunbar. More brash piling and tree transplanting in the morning. There was room for two more wheel barrow loads of trees at the edge of the pond. These got planted with remarkable speed so that by quarter to twelve the planting was done. Lunch was spent lying in the sun sheltered from the wind by the buildings. There was still plenty more brash to be piled so in the afternoon it was back to the brash.
Wednesday was at Corstorphine Hill and the big spring clean. Firstly we went on a nature walk with Rachel, which evolved into going for a walk round most of the hill, passing all the old favourite memorable places: the salmonberry, the Himalayan balsam, the (urgh) spiraea… Corstorphine Hill is due to be assessed for Green Flag status in the next month so we were removing tree guards from trees that had died and doing some litter picking. The removal of tree guards went really well but as there are about 5000 tree guards, we were always going to have to leave some…There was time for a quick trip up the tower at the end of the day too.
On Thursday we returned to Dunbar for the final time! (well we say that…but we’ll probably be back at some time in the future…). There was some light variation this time: making brash/habitat piles, putting in a noticeboard and attempting to stabilise the bridge across the burn.
So much vegetation had grown up since the winter that it actually made finding the wood quite a bit more awkward! But still we managed to find enough to keep going most of the day.. So whilst most of the group were being kept busy with that..Rob managed to relocate the VO phone which someone managed to lose on Tuesday….
Before lunch we took a trip to see the lovely scrape ponds dug several weeks ago. Horror of horrors! The larger of the ponds had tadpoles, but a shocking lack of water! What to do?! Improvise of course! So um..yes..due to the fact we had no bowls or buckets or anything of the sort…we were reduced to using mugs to scoop out the tadpoles and transfer them to bigger more luxurious ponds! Success! For some of them…can’t save them all…
In the afternoon one group spent time repairing the footbridge – the one which we’ve been using for the last 3 months or so…- and it is now possible for people to stand on it safely. The rest of group replaced the noticeboard near the wall. And then…because all that was finished with suprising speed….back to some more brash. There was time for a quick nature walk after..during which time we found a few unusual species….including pink hybrid primroses, the yellow figwort – which is really taking over- and everybody’s favourite: red campion!
And that’s all folks!
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