Ock Path Town End - Saturday 18th November 2023

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Blog and photos by Eleanor   

                                                                                                                                                                      The weather was dull and damp, but fortunately, without the heavy rain forecast the previous day. Our prospective tasks at the Town end of the Ock Path were to clear three areas and plant Spring wildflower bulbs, to put woodchip on the path in areas which had not been covered in an earlier session, to pick up litter and -, if time, to test some river water for phosphates and nitrates.

Sadly, only the first of these tasks was completed as only four and a half people turned up for the session. The half will be explained later. Having unloaded the car we trundled the wheelbarrow laden with tools to our encampment. We then set to work clearing two of the previously marked out areas. Fortunately, the ground was soft from the recent rain, so it was fairly easy to pull out nettles by the roots, though the abundant mud made the tools and our hands very muddy indeed.

Then it was time to plant the bulbs. The varieties were chosen because they will flower before the nettles take over in the Spring. We had winter aconite, wild garlic, wood anemone (rhizomes) - warning - please pronounce this correctly - an em o nee - not an enemy - Thank you, wild daffodil and snake's head fritillary. The latter don't flower until May but we've been successful with them before and they do like wet conditions.

We adjourned for our tea break and Philip had to go home, but we thank him for his help and thorough digging. After break the remaining four of us tackled the third area. There was a strange hummock in the middle from which some shoots, maybe previously planted bulbs were sprouting, so we left that and planted our bulbs in a circle round it.

With so few of us, it took two journeys to get the tools back to the starting point and I retrieved my car from the car park in the nick of time. Packing the tools and the wheelbarrow back in the car was inexplicably more difficult than when I set out from home. On top of that, they were covered in mud and would need a good clean.

Many thanks to the hard working few who came to the session.



Joan and Susan at work.




  
Philip and Lesley start the planting.




The bulbs

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