All the best dressed Trees!
It was national tree week this week (5th December), you may have noticed, there were events going on up and down the country, with Tree O’clock being by far the biggest – as an attempt to break the world record by no more than 100 people people at a single site in a single hour three teams in three sites broke the existing record by at least 1500 with the winning site in Northern Ireland managing to plant 26,422 Native trees!
And we did our bit in the park as well, well I say we, of course I mean they, I was unavoidably staying in 4 star luxury accommodation on the company dollar eating in fine restaurants and supping the finest diet coke performing important nay vital work for the economy, and helping to reduce British Airway’s end of year loss.
In preparation for my return the Rangers and the Youth Rangers coppiced a patch of Alder that had self set and had grown too crowded; They also began to plant some of the Hazel’s that would be grown instead of the Alder, Why Hazel you ask? Well Breaking Glass was a seminal hit and the real beginning of the brit pop revolution, oh you mean why Hazel trees? they are going to be used for fencing, for which Hazel is especially good (apparently)
There was also an attempt at fire.
Obviously any effort which involves the chopping down of the tree has to, by law, involve the almost immediate use by man (and I’m being specific – I don’t believe women have the same drive to set light to everything) of fire to reduce the large sticks of wood to slightly blackened, but still generally the same size just dirtier and smellier sticks of wood; and lo this did occur! although it has to be said slightly more successfully on Saturday than on Sunday – Apparently God doesn’t like fire on the Sabbath.
And so like the prodigal son before me I returned to the fold, weary from travels I approached the Park on foot (ok I got a lift) through a great storm (and I waited till it had stopped raining) un-prepared for what lay before me (well not entirely un-prepared, Waterproof Hat, Coat, Trousers, Nice warm Fleece, Steel Toe cap boots, Packed lunch including fruit and chocolate bar, money for extra sustenance should it be required, so probably quite well prepared really given that it was only a day at the park) and I was met by the Head Ranger with the ritual greeting “Hello Dave – Put the kettle on and have a cup of tea!”. I can honestly say civilisation will never be dead whilst this place exists.
Seriously though it’s been over a month since I was at the park for anything more than a brief visit to go through paperwork – Halloween was the last night and it was great to get back! and on Sunday I had an absolute plethora of activity to choose from!
As well as tree planting it was also tree dressing weekend. Tree dressing isn’t about getting your favourite tree and putting it in a nice twinset and pearls (although if that’s what you want to do who are we to stop you); it’s about making decorations and hanging them from trees – most households in the UK will indulge in a bit of indoor tree dressing at this time of year, and tree dressing at the park allowed you to make some deccies – hang them on a tree at the park for a time and then take them home and hang them on your tree there.
The weekend had been beset by a couple of issues – not least of which was the weather, it rained a little on Sunday morning, which caused a couple of people who were going to provide entertainment during the day to cancel. The most surprising of these were the Vikings. You may remember from a previous post about woodfest me talking about out Viking rein-actors. I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to history but I’m fairly sure I remember stories of Scandinavian warriors braving the high seas to do great damage on our shores (and as far afield as Iceland and Greenland and even the USA), so imagine the shock when we heard that the 21st century facsimile of this great sea-faring nation should cancel because (and I believe this is correct) “our tent will go mouldy if it gets wet”. So much mediaeval heartache could have been avoided if that was also true in the 6th century!
The Friends group were to have a tombola, and, as such they would need some sort of shelter, one of the friends had kindly loaned a gazebo, but unlike in the summer when we could place it nicely on the meadow it needed to go on hard standing, making it difficult to pin down, and it was breezy, well fairer to say gusty, actually fair to say windy! tying one side down wasn’t going to be an issue, the were railings in exactly the right position, this did mean that one side potentially could flip into the air at any moment. I contemplated leaving it like this – I thought it added to the excitement of the day – if the breeze came along at the right moment it could cause the first unpowered human flight at Irchester Country Park and thus bring the day into record books in it’s own right. but I also thought that there may be a slight risk of a law suit in this litigious age and we found a water and an oil drum to tie the other side of the Gazebo down to. Still I think the potential for human flight is something we could explore later.
Once I got the Gazebo up the kettle beckoned once more, it’s rough tough work getting those gazebos up you know! and I contemplated the rest of the day; there were choices to be made, do I help out on the tombola or do I help plant trees…
Well whilst I sat and contemplated several members of the friends group arrived, ready to do battle with the crowds and manage the tombola – and the decision was made, tree planting it was.
Obviously the first thing that needed to be done in preparation was have a cup of tea, and prepare an insulated cup to take with me, this important step completed we loaded the Mule – this isn’t an animal but a machine; a kind of 4 wheel drive buggy; a utility vehicle with wheels about a 18inches tall and 8 inches wide and a top speed of about 15 mph, but lots of what us petrol heads call low down grunt so it’s very good at pulling weights about and moving around off road; the worst thing in as far as I am concerned is that I can’t drive it – I am destined to be a passenger – but it’s great fun even so.
We made sure we had the important equipment loaded in the mule first, keeping it upright, and in a stable position to ensure that there are no leakages (yes I’m talking about the flask of tea, what did you think I’d be talking about) and then we threw in a couple of spades, sundry other tools, gloves, and a bag of 56 trees.
I was telling someone about this the other day and they were quite incredulous when I said we had a bag of 56 trees, so, for those of you who are sitting there with that same look on your face I’ll explain:
Trees start quite small, even Oak trees, and the Hazels that we were planting were just a couple of years old at the most, the tallest was a metre high, the smallest, about 20cm, all of which were more capable of fitting inside a standard black plastic rubbish sack.
Once the mule was loaded and we were ready to go we stood around the mule for the perfunctory 5 five minutes waiting for the Ranger to complete certain other tasks which included finding Millie: Millie is a dog, I’d say a collie, Manchester terrier cross, very cute, very athletic, and wonderfully independent. This independence does lead however to her sometimes deciding that she needs a little walk – and if the humans around her aren’t willing to come with her then that’s just fine – she’s more than capable of going herself! The good news is she comes when she’s called, the bad news is she may have quite a long way to come so you have to learn a bit of patience!
Whilst waiting for Millie disaster struck! and it was clear this could have set us back some time; I needed to take my coat off as it was was getting warm in the sun, so I put my insulated mug of tea down on the seat of the Mule, and to cut a short story shorter it fell over! spilling almost a tablespoon of my tea onto the seat. What was I to do – the seat would need to be cleaned, possibly dry cleaned, an incident report would need to be completed, and more importantly than anything more tea would need to be brewed! In the end realising that I (and the others) was wearing waterproof trousers I wiped off the seat with the arm of my coat and just held on to my mug a little tighter.
And so we were off for the mornings planting, with a brief stop to collect some canes, we travelled through the park with Millie running along side the mule (even more evidence that she is at least part collie in the manner in which we were being herded) and we reached the spot in question which was near the top of the park by big foot pond. As I said at the top of this quite a bit of preparation had already taken place.
I’ve mentioned before that the park is an old Ironstone Quarry, one of the artefacts of this the creation of “hills and dales”, what this isn’t is hills and dales on the scale of Yorkshire, what this actually means is an undulating surface where a trench was dug and the spoil from the trench was piled behind it, the spoil heaps are about 5 metres apart and the trenches are 2 metres deep (about),
We were planting the trees on the spoil heaps, 6 rows of up to 10 each added up to 56 in total, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet – it was a bit wet.
Now I’ve experienced proper wet already this winter, I was in the Lake District when more rain fell in one place in the UK in one day than has ever done before and it wasn’t quite that wet, but the park is mainly clay, and when that gets wet it gets slippery, and claggy, and sticky, and lots of other things ending in y and in places enough rain had fallen to mean that when you put a spade in the ground, firstly it was quite hard to pull out again, and when you did you couldn’t help but notice the hole left behind filled with water, not a good start for a tree (unless it’s a willow or a mango possibly?)
So there was a certain amount of care needed when choosing the planting site for each tree (as well as about 3 metres from any other new planting) and the hill (sounds much nicer than spoil heap doesn’t it?) we were planting on had had, as well as the Alder, many many other trees growing on it in the past, all of which had left their root systems behind, finally, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, the quarrymen who worked the quarry were a hard working bunch, salt of the earth, you’d never want to meet a more regular bunch of blokes in your life – they just weren’t the most efficient way of quarrying the land for Ironstone, and the proof of this is the amount of Ironstone we find left in the soil whenever we try to dig it today. when we were digging the hole for the bench in the summer we would have taken so much longer if it wasn’t for the half tonne of stone we found in the hole.
This time however I only wanted to make small holes for little trees, and hitting old roots, stones, or finding a patch so waterlogged that it immediately filled with water when I removed the spade was just annoying. But the upside was, unlike the trench in the ground was soft (chocolate mousse soft) and making holes big enough for the trees was pretty simple, straightforward, untaxing, work – and giving that by rights I should have had awful jetlag after a four day trip to the US-A incredibly invigorating!
By lunchtime (2 hours later) we’d planted about 14 trees and drunk 2 cups of tea. all in all I think that was a good morning’s work – we then rounded Millie up (more the other way around) and headed back to the office for Lunch.
When we got back to the office tree dressing had moved on a-pace, the trees outside the new Quarryman’s Rest Cafe (soon to be opened – watch this space) were looking much prettier in their bling; and the Kiddies seemed very happy to be making the decorations and hanging them, even the older ones (those in their 30’s and 40’s) seemed to enjoy it!
After sustenance of sandwiches and over heated soup (don’t ask) we decided that we ought to get back to the planting in case members of the public should arrive looking for us. Unlikely we thought after a day and a half, but you never knew.
Everyone re-mounted the Mule, then we got off and looked for Millie, then we gave up and re-mounted the Mule, then we started to drive to the top of the park, then Millie appeared in front of the Mule.
I should point out that it’s not normal for a Ranger to have a dog (or pet of any kind) with them at the Park, but this was exceptional circumstances, as Millie is actually owned by the partner of the Ranger who was currently incapacitated with a serious injury to the ankle caused by a flying idiot. When Millie ran in front of the Mule on this (and a few other occasions) it has to be said that we thought we might be sharing a little more agony than an ankle problem with Millie’s owner, we were rehearsing the conversation on the way to the top of the park – “I know you thought you’d had a bad week…” or “Millie has always been a really active dog hadn’t she…”, but Millie is a better Dog than that and the Ranger is a better driver and between them no animal or volunteer was injured on the journey (and I have to say, as far as I could tell – no tea was spilt either!)
Back to Big Foot Pond and it was time to get on with the planting, planting a tree is a fairly simple process it seems (there is a great deal to be done to get to this stage but in Blue Peter tradition that’s all stuff we completed earlier!);
First job is to dig a hole – more make a slot – wide enough to fit all of the roots of the new tree deep enough to cover the roots but not so far as go further than it in the earth before.
Then take the sapling and place it carefully in the hole – try to remember to smile for the Ranger taking the picture even when the sun is directly in your face!
Once the sapling is firmly in place then it’s time to protect the tree from the elements – and make it work out a little. first of all it’s given a green jacket which is held in place by two canes, the green jacket made up of two densities of mesh, a solid mesh at the bottom and a more open weave at the top.
The idea of this design is that the tree will reach for the light at the top of the mesh and will be protected from pests at the bottom. The final thing was to make sure that we didn’t run out of tea spoons in 2010
So we planted a teaspoon tree
I’ll try and keep you up to date on the progress on the tea spoon tree – oh and the Hazels 
