Well a fine sunny Saturday for the 3rd April had the Denburn diggers working hard, including our two latest recruits who gamely set to removing sticky-willy (cleavers) from round the daffodils, emerging tulips and other plants by the re-instated path.
Yes – finally the Heras fencing is gone and the path up to the cemetery has been re-instated giving us access to do some planting. To that end several of us brought some plants and seeds along to cheer up the bare soil and compete with the nettles and cleavers. We now have foxgloves, forget-me-nots, more daffodils, some divided snowdrops, honesty and other colourful flowers to look forward to. The area was left with a concrete shelf – whether built specifically or grown from thrown out leftover concrete is not clear but we barrowed lots of compost from our bins to cover it and sowed some shallow rooting annuals to hide this eyesore. The workmen had also left us a lot of potentially dangerous (trip hazards etc) rusty metal fastenings so we cleared them away to by the bin.
While some of us worked on this area, including running to and fro for water to drench the new plants, others were edging the burn, pond and paths and cutting back the beech hedge that had grown far too tall over the last year of relative neglect. You will see that during the week concrete was laid at the base of the west fork of the burn to prevent leaking. Now we need some rain to test it out (and continue watering our newly planted areas).
Meantime the wood is looking delightful with spring flowers including some white violets and white periwinkle that several of us don’t recall ever seeing before plus all the daffodils, wood anemones and bluebells while green shoots are emerging on most of the trees and the birds are singing away (or drumming in the case of the woodpecker) to signal their territories and fitness to mate – spring is most definitely in the air.
Come and join us at 10am on Saturday May 1st for our next green gymn – everyone agreed we’d had a pretty good workout today. Bring your own flask of tea/coffee for our mid time break.
Crail Preservation Society 