Tuesday – Redhall Walled Garden
Another day with a brand new VO, the day was off to a good start continuing with the path that we have been battling on with for weeks. Shovelling and wheelbarrowing were the order of the day, much to everyones delight. Despite the forecast of sunshine all day, the VO’s had lunch in the van to avoid the rain, much to the uproar of the hardy volunteers who battled the elements and roar of the strimmer nearby. After lunch we soldiered on to try and finish the loop, in order that the Wednesday group could not complain about the lack of work.
We also found a weird caterpillar.
Wednesday – Redhall Walled Garden
So back again at Redhall Walled Garden, with the usual gang, minus Willie. During tea, we managed to scare a bunch of nursery kids who were trying out the new path – which was followed by a debate as to whether you could get ‘mini- mattocks’ and if we could get the nursery to assist us. After being instructed with what to do by Chris standing higher than normal on top of the van, work commenced. With the group split between digging and barrowing, good progress was made until a fairly lengthy debate was started by Kirsty (and many others later joined in) regarding ‘what makes a path?’ And the pros and cons of having a grassy no-obvious path as opposed to a blatantly obvious say bark-chip path for example. How can we make paths more ‘path-y’? Answers on the back of a postcard please.
Amongst the old bark chips of the existing path several archeological discoveries were made. Several articles from the Plastic Era. By lunchtime the path had been fully dug (although the width escalated widely throughout)! Lunch was spent on a fallen tree – whereupon someone had carved some unhelpful holes into the trunk thus overtime filling with water. So much moving about. Afterwards, the path was fully finished, a nice spongy layer of bark chips enticing one to walk round the park. A historical nature walk followed – entertaining as always.
Thursday – Water of Leith Walkway
We headed down to the Water of Leith Walkway at Juniper Green on Thursday to help the rangers…(ahem..).Mainly to stick in a signpost – to stop people getting lost; and to try and reduce the amount of water which was ponding on the main walkway. Simple enough? After being assured by Dave the ranger that there were no electricity wires in the way, the digging team (Pat, Derek, Elliot and Fiona) commenced digging. I took everybody else (minus John – who sensibly wanted to stay within sight on the van) down to the main walkway. In theory it should have gone thus: By removing the vegetation to the side of walkway, the runoff water should then flow down into the main river. In practice however, there was a lip at the edge of the path, which prevented the water from flowing away – thus the ponding. So we removed the vegetation, ‘subtly’ throwing the vegetative evidence (turfs) in the river when (technically) no-one was watching (ok, so I was probably the least subtle). Then brushing the water off the side of the path, and filling in the puddles with a dwindling amount of type 1.
I suppose given that the forecast was to be heavy, persistent rain we got off lightly. One minute it was lovely and sunny, the next it had gone bizarrely dark and was pelting us with rain. In particular this made the puddle brushing rather pointless. There were many grateful comments from passersby. Lunch was spent in the sun, or the van for the meteorologically challenged. Then we moved on to step clearing, and the discovery of a rather low bridge – which may have explained Chris’s absence for the day. A nice early finish, as a lot of hard work was completed….and Pat’s promise of a story next week.
To view photos of past and present projects, click here