tackling the second pond

The army has been firing some very heavy artillery for the past three days, four guns one after another in rapid succession, in vollies that make the house shake.  The Systems Administrator said that it sounded like practice battery firing, and that it is usually done on the ranges up in Northumberland but moves to Essex during the grouse shooting season.  I asked if the sound of gunfire disturbed the grouse particularly, and the S.A. said that it was more a question of not shelling the shooting parties.

I put on my waders and set out to tackle the wildlife pond in the meadow, but soon discovered that it was so dry that the waders were de trop.  I hope the water has simply evaporated, and the pond hasn't sprung a leak.  It has a butyl liner, but I have allowed a lot of brambles and shrubs to grow around it.  Indeed, it has alder trees growing in it, plus so many reeds and iris that I haven't made it to the far side yet.  Things seem to be getting slightly damper as I go downhill, and I haven't seen any holes or damage to the liner, so I'm reasonably optimistic so far that it will hold water when refilled.

I had assumed that I would be scooping out wet gloop, but it turned out that the layer of soil covering the liner was held together with a very solid matrix of roots.  Instead I found I had to cut through the roots with secateurs, and remove the soil in slabs, almost like lifting turf.   Using the secateurs, and occassionally the loppers, I am careful to hold the mat of roots and earth clear of the liner as I cut, to avoid stabbing it.  Progress has been impeded around the edges by the ornamental cobbles originally used to cover the liner, which are now embedded in the root mat, invisible until I hit them with the secateurs.  This is the first time I've ever cleared the pond out, and we made it over a decade ago.  The soil and roots accumulated since then measures between 5cm and 15cm thick.  It is, I think, an example of a hydrosere, the process whereby bodies of fresh water tend to convert to dry land, without intervention to maintain them as open water.  Whenever I've asked wildlife experts from the Essex Wildlife Trust the best time to clear out a pond, they've always said that ideally you don't, just dig another.  But that isn't really an option in a domestic garden with limited space, and if I don't clear the pond then at some point in the future I won't have one any more, just a butyl lined bed filled with alder trees.

The chickens are great creatures of habit.  Yesterday I let them out early, in mid afternoon, as it was such a lovely day and I was working in the front garden to keep an eye on them.  I thought it would be a treat for them, instead of which they were intensely suspicious, took a long time to come out, and after eating some grass retreated back into their run.  The Systems Administrator tempted them out with Value Sultanas (the rooster can recognise the sultana container at a considerable distance) but soon after eating their snack they went back into the run, until it got to proper chicken letting out time, a couple of hours before sunset, at which point they came out happily under the S.A.'s supervision.  Right person, right time.  I consoled myself that at least they weren't pining all day in their run for the final bit of the afternoon when they would be allowed out.  Final bit of the afternoon seems to be all that they want.

cleaning the pond

I got to see the Queen's Dutch paintings in the end.  I nipped down from Piccadilly to the gallery and bought a ticket for the afternoon first thing yesterday when I got to London, before meeting a friend for a post-lunch snack.  Or at least, a meal that was after she'd had (a business) lunch, and substituted for mine.  The Dutch landscapes were jolly nice, and the staff let me in at 4.00pm as it was quietening down by then, although I'd got a 4.30pm entry ticket.  On the way out I remembered to get my ticket stamped, and tucked it away safely, so I can have free entry to the gallery for the next twelve months.  Coming up this winter is a show of photographs of Antarctic expeditions, which might be interesting, if I happen to be in London with a couple of hours to spare. This process of converting your exhibition ticket into an annual pass only works for tickets bought from the ticket desk at the gallery, not those got through travel agents or complimentary tickets.  With time to spare before the cheap trains resumed, I walked back from Buckingham Palace to Liverpool Street.  It really isn't very far, since walk up the Mall and you are in Trafalgar Square, which I always regard as eminently walkable.  London looked rather beautiful in the sunlight.

I'm not surprised the Metropolitan Police have trouble with crowd control, though.  My quick nip across Green Park to get my ticket for later co-incided with the tail end of trooping the colour.  One police constable and a police community support officer were controlling the crowds of people waiting to cross the road in front of the Palace.  Virtually no traffic passed, and we stood there as the little pedestrian light turned from red to green and back again, and the community support officer stood there with arms outstretched, indicating for us to stay on the pavement.  Finally a middle aged woman spoke up and said that she wanted to get to Trafalgar Sqare.  He indicated the direction, and she asked when she could cross the road.  He said that we couldn't while trooping the colour was going on.  Until she spoke he made no eye contact, never smiled, never spoke and didn't explain what the hold-up was and when we would be allowed to cross.  I'm middle aged, middle class, white, with a strong RP accent, an air of confident  bourgeois entitlement, and no history of police hasslement, and I don't much like the Metropolitan Police.  If I were young, working class, black or Asian, with no house, degree or previous illustrious career to fall back on, and a definite history of being stopped by the police, I would probably like them a lot less.  A cheery 'Sorry, folks, we're just waiting for the parade to finish, you'll all be on the move in five minutes' accompanied by a smile would have worked wonders.

Today, as it was such beautiful warm weather, and I was supposed to clean out the pond in September, and had bought the waders to do so, I put on the waders and stepped into the pond.  Carefully.  Happily it isn't deeper than my legs.  I thought it wasn't, but the Systems Administrator had made some alarming mutterings.  I pulled out all of the sedge or whatever the grassy thing is that was seeding everywhere, and scooped out as much of the duckweed as I could, using a plank as a boom.  The sedge had formed great floating lumps, some of which I had to ask the S.A. to haul on from above while I pushed from below, they were so heavy.  I scooped out some surplus oxygenating weed while I was in there, and some brown gloop, and left it all around the edge of the pond so that in theory any creatures in it could make their way back into the water.  I feat that in practice any caught in the middle of the clumps of sedge will be well and truly stuck.  I wore a short sleeved T shirt for this operation, as I hate dripping sleeves, and so discovered empirically that the leaves of the sedge or whatever it is have sharp edges.

Next year I'll get some nice iris, and maybe pickerel weed.  We aren't overly well-endowed with aquatics suppliers around here, and it isn't an aspect of gardening I know much about, so it will probably be whatever B&Q are doing, if they do packs of pond plants next year like they did this year.  No more sedge.  That really does fall into the boss's bioplant category.

shopping from my sofa

The plastic fastener on the belt that came with the water repellent trousers I wear to work broke.  I'm not surprised.  It didn't look strong enough to cope with the vagaries of this world.  I had to have a belt otherwise the trousers fall down, what with the weight of my telephone and radio and secateurs all shoved into various pockets, and I didn't want to use my nice one long term.

I looked on Amazon.  You can buy practically everything on Amazon nowadays.  When the S.A. needed a new chainsaw, the cheapest place to get one of the desired brand and quality, after much shopping around, turned out to be Amazon.  It might have been different if I'd wanted an expensive belt, a lux, classic addition to my wardrobe that was going to add the finishing touch to my tidiest outfits, but I didn't.  I wanted a cheap leather belt, with a metal buckle that looked as though it had a sporting chance of lasting a few years, to be worn underneath a baggy uniform shirt.  It turned out that on Amazon I could narrow the search to 'jeans belts', and within ten minutes I'd found something that looked just the job.  Even with P&P it could be delivered to my door for under a tenner, and it arrived in about three days, before the next time I had to go to work.  It's true that when it came I found I had badly misunderstood the sizing on the website, so that the buckle came about a foot inside the nearest hole when wrapped around my waist, but the Systems Administrator has promised to drill out some new holes, and shorten the end.  If I'd been buying Mulberry's finest I'd have been crushed, there again, if I'd been buying an expensive belt I'd have gone to more trouble to understand the size chart.  It's fine.

This is partly why I think the High Street is in structural trouble, and our planners had better start getting used to the idea, and thinking laterally and creatively about allowing some changes of property use.  I could have gone into Colchester, and paid to park (about the same as the P&P on the belt), and spent an hour trailing around Debenhams and Marks and Spencer, and peering nervously into jeans shops I don't normally frequent, or investigating Primark, but I didn't have to.  I wanted a cheap, strong, functional leather belt and in ten minutes I'd found one.

At the wildlife fair on Wednesday I asked the Colchester Naturalists when the best time would be to remove some of the sedge that was taking over my pond, given it seemed rich in wildlife which I didn't want to disturb more than I had to.  They said September would be good, so I thought that this autumn I really would get on with it.  This meant that I needed a pair of thigh length waders, a purchase I've shied away from in the past.  Again I looked on Amazon.  Like I said, they sell everything nowadays.  Top of the list of thigh length waders came a pair for thirty quid, that had got unanimous five star reviews from five different customers.  Interestingly, none of them mentioned wanting the waders for actual fishing.  One was clearing out a pond, another a ditch, and a third needed them to do riverbed kick sampling for a B.Sc. dissertation.  Another said he was only going to wear them a very few times, so presumably pond clearance again.  That sounded like my sort of level in the marketplace, as I don't need super-warm neoprene lined ones to wear all day while standing in a trout stream.  They did come with steel insteps, to protect me if I stood on any sharp projections, which shouldn't be an issue in an artificial garden pond, but could come in useful.  The waders arrived today, smelling strongly of rubber.  They fit OK, and have straps with poppers to hold them to your belt, like chainsaw chaps, and altogether look as though they should do the job.

Now Colchester has a fishing tackle shop, next to the slightly upmarket department store at the top of the High Street, and they could probably have sold me some waders.  But they might only have had expensive waders, for people who wanted to spend the day standing in a salmon river, and I'd have had to make a special trip there, and contend with sales staff in what is to me an alien environment.  Much easier just to have a big, rubber smelling box arrive in a van.

It isn't going to get any better for the High Street.  I look at my parents' generation.  My father refuses to use the internet at all, and my mother is deeply suspicious about putting her credit card details on-line.  I have taken to internet shopping quite happily from the comfort of my sofa, while the youngsters will be buying things on the move on their phones.  Look at the house names in most English villages:  Forge Cottage, The Old Bakery, The Old Police House, Church House, School Cottage, The Old Post Office.  Look at the house fronts in the side streets of many small English towns, with their big front windows now covered by net curtains or blinds.  Those were shops, forty or fifty years ago.  And yet the villages and small towns are nice places to live (apart from the inconvenience of no longer having the shop-cum-post office that you spent about a fiver a week in tops when it was still open).  The old business premises aren't derelict eyesores, they're just used for something different.  Planners and councillors take note.

all the fun of the wildlife fair

The Beth Chatto Gardens held a wildlife fair today.  I gather it was the first time they'd done one, and nobody knew exactly what to expect.  I can guess why they were doing it: because late August is a dead time for plant sales, and anything is to be welcomed that encourages the car park to fill up with people who will buy entry tickets and might buy at least some plants, and in the case of the Chatto Gardens refreshments (their cafe is very nice).  The beekeepers had a stand, so I said I'd go and help on that for part of the day, as I thought it would probably be entertaining and the other stands sounded interesting (plus I am a helpful person keen to Do My Bit for my Association).

The Chatto Gardens were very good to us, as helpers got free admission to the fair and gardens, and we were allowed as many volunteers as we needed, and free tea and coffee from the cafe, and borrowed bee-friendly plants from the sales area as part of our display.  Our stand wasn't as elaborate as the one we have for the Tendring Show, but we had our teaching beehive, and some basic tools, and posters, and gave out samples of cakes made with honey (recipe booklet 50p) and did candle rolling for the children (£1 a go).  Luckily I did not have to supervise any children making their own candles, as I've never done one myself, but I watched my fellow beekeepers carefully while they did it.  The candles come out tapered, and if you weren't concentrating it would be very easy to finish up with the wick protruding from the wrong end.  It was a grey and rather chilly day, and the wax foundation wasn't as flexible as it would have been given warmer weather, so I was doubly glad to escape.  Instead I talked to prospective new beekeepers about what was involved and how to progress things if they wanted to.

On the other stands, the Colchester Naturalists had got trays of pond life, a case of deceased stag beetles, and a live stag beetle grub, so I went and learnt more about how to identify stag beetle larvae, and the best time to clear out a pond (September).  The Essex and Suffolk Dormouse stand had hazel nut shells that had been nibbled by doormice versus other sorts of mice, and I think I finally began to grasp the difference in the teeth marks.  Apparently there are doormice in the Chatto Gardens, indeed they had a photograph of Mrs Chatto herself holding two, and round here is something of a doormouse hot spot, so the idea that they might be in our wood is not so ludicrous as I thought it was.  The doormouse expert offered to check nutshells for me to see what had eaten them, if I wanted to send him samples, and it turned out I knew his parents because they are beekeepers.  It's a small world.

I introduced myself to the people on the Woodland Trust stand, and got an update on anything I ought to mention in my talks, though I think I knew most of it.  While I was there I did check out the answers to a couple of questions that have been bothering me, even if none of my audiences have asked them yet.  The most pressing was, given the need for the UK and the world to increase agricultural production, and the value of some other non-farmland habitats such as heathland, what sort of land does the WT want to plant over with trees?  The answer is grade 3 agricultural.  I looked at the Tendring Tree Wardens stand and discovered that another beekeeper I know is one of my local tree wardens.  I was speaking to his mother yesterday about doing a Woodland Trust talk next year (very small world indeed).

There was a substantial element of people with an interest in nature conservation networking with each other.  The RSPB officer in charge of their new wildlife garden at Flatford Mill wanted advice on keeping bees in the garden at Flatford.  After discussing the matter we tended towards the verdict that it was a good idea to have bees on site, but not beehives in the area open to the public, especially since so many visitors bring their dogs.  Bees don't like dogs (or horses, though most people don't bring those).  In theory having nice bees in a garden open to the public should not be a problem at all, but the trouble is that the RSPB would potentially only discover that their hive had developed inappropriate guarding behaviour and become nasty after a visitor (or their dog) had got stung.

The carpark was pretty full by the time I left at about half past one.  I'll be interested in any feedback I get from our secretary about whether the Chatto Gardens found it worthwhile, but I enjoyed myself.