The high Midsummer pomps

By C:

Whether in honour of the summer solstice, or because new site-warden had been advised that our traditional midsummer task at this location does not appeal to some of our volunteers, today we were initially awarded two tasks at Mowbray Fields:

1. The annual orchid count
2. Repair work to the boardwalk

Now it is the first of those two, which makes some Green-Gymmers groan.  Tramping through the undergrowth – as delicately as we can – and counting flowers?  For some, that would be a pleasant diversion from our normal range of tasks.  For others, it would just be frustrating.  No use trying to lure them out with the poet’s assurance that “soon will the musk carnations break and swell, / … gold-dusted snapdragon, / Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell, / And orchids …”  No, actually Matthew Arnold didn’t say anything about orchids.  Besides, South-Oxfordshire orchids tend to be a tad less exotic than their tropical cousins:

The second task, we were told, involved “taking away the chicken wire and replacing with fencing staples”.  So a wire-cutter and hammer job: much more appealing to a certain mind-set!

Snipping wire before levering it off with the hammer

Knocking in staples - note the alternative use of coffee mug to hold supplies

Either way, today’s menu made for a change from hedge-care and fence-care.  Both of those boil down to ‘vegetation clearance’, ie weeding, but on a larger scale than in a garden.  Today’s tasks were more to do with the ‘nuts & bolts’ of site management.  In the case of boardwalk maintenance: literally attending to the site hardware.  In the case of identifying and plotting flower-species on a map: generating some of the data which makes for an evidence-based site-management plan – or at least evidence-informed eco-management.

“It’s quite wet/boggy in places so wellies are a must I think!” the site warden had warned in advance.  It would also have helped this particular volunteer if she had remembered in time that one of her wellies had sprung a leak, therefore a new pair required.  (Why does one always have to buy two boots, if it is only one new boot which is needed?) 

More to the point, for those volunteers who were up for orchid-counting (and had remembered their wellies), was the difficulty of seeing the flowers above the level of the water in places.  South Oxfordshire has been a little soggy of late – with some quite spectacular thunderstorms, including one big hit: on a biogas plant.

The Mowbray-Fields fill-pond was therefore once again doing its primary job of preventing local flooding.  This, for example, would have to be logged as ‘No orchids observed in this sector’: 

The flowers might have been there, holding their breath; but we couldn’t see them, so the score would remain a big round zero – like when the England football team are playing.  Are Green-Gymmers tempted to pretend in such circumstances?  Yes, especially when there is rivalry between teams of orchid-counters.  Thus far, scientific integrity has always prevailed.

This year, however, no such scenario could have arisen.  Volunteers began, as usual, with a tutorial in orchid identification:

Then they disappeared from view of the rest of the team, as they looked for the best point from which to begin their survey. 

Meanwhile, the boardwalk-repairers were beginning to think, “We need to get silent hammers!” as well as engaging in some competitive hammering (counting the number of blows it took to sink a staple).  As the morning wore on, and more hands were engaged on hammering, it was visually not the most interesting event to record, but it did sound “like a drumming workshop – for beginners”:

Accessing the fill-pond area of the site, for the orchid count, was always going to be difficult, with the luxuriant growth there has been this year:

Sadly, the explorers had eventually to conclude that it was simply too wet underfoot for the surveyors to get safely on to site.  Very frustrating, because from the path, one could see that the orchids were there ...

there was just no way to get closer to search for those specimens which were not growing quite so tall.

Instead, a third task was hastily arranged.  Guess what?  Vegetation clearance!