White riot

Sophie and Jo enjoying the weather

Snow!

Another Saturday of two halves.

Some of us were at Marsden planting 100 Hawthorn, 100 Blackthorn, and 50 Scots Pine. We were: myself, Matthew, Kayleigh, Sophie, Joe, Tom, Oscar, Remy, Dave, Tanya, Michael, Jake, Kayleigh, Jon and Tessie, Paul, Peter, Julia, Alastair and Jared

Others were at Meltham planting 50 Sessile Oak, 100 hawthorn, 50 dog rose, 15 blackthorn, 15 crab apple, 15 hazel H They were:Philip, Stephen, Ben, Hap, John H., Darren, Cath and Geoff.

An old punk song. A cryptic clue for fun in the snow?

https://youtu.be/IvG3is7Bm1w

Sunday morning

Back to Meltham. And on a Sunday, a decision made based on how long it would take all the ice to melt.

We planted a further 30 sessile oak, 75 pedunculate oak, 50 scots pine, 15 crab apple 15 hazel, 50 common alder, 15 goat willow and 15 grey willow.

We were: myself, Hap, Philip, Stephen, Remy, Murray, Kayleigh, Jon and Tessie, Dave, Peter, John H., Sophie, Steve, and Ben. Plus our hosts Heath, Harry and Sam.

We need to return to plant a short length of hedge and 50 remaining pedunculate oak.

No photo this week, I was busy making up mesh guards for the pines.

And there is only one song for a Sunday morning...

https://youtu.be/Xhbyj8pqUao

Slippery people

Hap and Philip arriving, in glorious sunshine.

A trip out of the valley, to Meltham today. In the ice and snow.

We were: Geoff, Dave, Hap, Peter, Philip, Darren, Stephen, Steve, Murray, Alastair, Jared, myself, Kayleigh, John H., Ben, and Michael. Plus Heath and his two sons.

We aimed to plant 275 trees, 60 sessile oak, 50 hazel, 25 wild cherry, 25 bird cherry, 35 rowan, and 50 scots pine.

The ice and snow cause a bit of fun at going home time. With a treacherous slope down from the parking spot, some manual snow clearance and a handy tow from Heath's land rover were needed. 

I was last man out, and my little car needed no assistance. 

https://youtu.be/rx2_iHftARo

Burn it down

We plan our plantings and order our trees in the Summer. What we didn't anticipate this year was a sudden and near exponential growth in the number of volunteers.

Some tasks we planned just won't accommodate 30+ people. And we can't just magic up more trees and bigger sites. Happily we do have some larger sites to occupy us for the next few weeks. Hopefully our increased membership is long term, and we can plan for next year accordingly.

This Saturday a reduced group met to plant 150 hawthorn and hazel on an old site, where we were asked to clear some larger trees last year. 150 might sound a lot, but with 13 adults and 2 children we still finished very early.

We were: myself, Philip, Dave, Geoff, Sophie and Arthur, Jon and Tess, John, Cath, Jess, Lee, Hap, Kayleigh, Peter, and Tanya.

https://youtu.be/IV6WFnLUl10