Stake and (wood) Chips

Tuesday – Gullane
My first day out as a VO and what a lovely day it was! The sun was shining, even if it was a little windy! Cutting down Sea Buckthorn was the aim of the day and we were met by a friendly ranger to show us where to start. We were led to ‘Dingly Dell’ and put to work on the vast swathe of Sea Buckthorn bushes. It is nasty spikey stuff and there was many a thorn in finger incident, but we persevered and by lunch time had made good progress in the Dell. After some particularly tasty toffee pops fresh from the biscuit factory we got back to work and cleared a large section at the entrance to the Dell before working our way back up the path, clearing the regrowth at the edge of the path. Apologies for the lack of photographs, I completely forgot I had the camera – newbies eh?!

Wednesday 12th October
So back to Redhall Walled Garden today, moving onwards from the original path. Objective for the day: to (safely) cut up the 2 wind-blown trees and use the wood from this to edge the nature walk path. The trees were a considerable challenge – there was one tree (somehow devoid of roots) lying on the ground – upon which another tree had blown, although the latter was still rooted into the ground. Tommy and Sarah did an excellent job at cutting the branches and logs off, with Alan neatly cutting these up further and segregating them into piles: Large logs – for edging; Smaller logs – for stakes; and Brash. Favorable logs from the former pile ended up on the ‘Take Home Pile’.

The large edging logs were taken and measured up for size by Rob, Willie and Anna, the smaller were cut into stakes by Dave. Thorough group effort! (I was ‘supervising’).

Nature walk turned scavenger hunt commenced in the afternoon, after an amusing incident whereupon I *nearly* locked the van keys in the van – oops! I blame the faulty wheelbarrows for distracting me…….

On return to the walled garden, Tommy and Willie showed us the mosaic tiles, amongst other things they had made at Redhall.

Thursday- Gullane
Thursday saw us back at Dingly Dell, waging war on the sea buckthorn once more. Despite some of us dressing for a cold windy day, it actually turned out sunny and warm! Extra help was on hand once more with Jen from East Lothian Ranger Service and her dog Ozzy joining us.

All the people throwing lengths of cut buckthorn proved too much for Ozzy to resist and he could often be seen running off with pieces from the “habitat piles”; quite a feat when you consider just how vicious the thorns are on this plant! A great effort all round, despite Ozzy’s best efforts, saw several new habitat piles created. Left for a few seasons to dry out these will eventually be burnt, hopefully allowing a richer diversity of plants to grow in their absence. Despite the amount of area we cleared there was still plenty of buckthorn on the dunes, good news for the caterpillars found living on them.

And for those interested last weeks caterpillar was a Grey Dagger (Acronicta psi).

To view photos from past and prest projects click here