Autumn Almanac

2023. Another season is upon us, but still time for some lovely warm spells during early October. 

For the first time I helped using the incinerator at the back of the lodge. There were 4 ton bags filled with mainly holly, broom and lavender cuttings, plus some small logs to keep the fire going. We heaped the contents into the incinerator using forks, making sure there were enough air pockets to encourage the flames and stop it from smoking too much.

  

The 'popping' seeds sounded like fireworks!

After making short work of that, we headed into the east woods to carry out 'crown raising' and general 'opening out' of the main trails. Along the way, Amy spotted some unusual growth on a tree. 

This is Scrambled Egg Slime Mold, which is also known as Dog Vomit Slime Mold (as reported in an earlier post). The mold can actually move and leave a crawling trail, similar to that of a snail - as the picture shows.

As often happens, there was a session of litter picking included in the day, this however  provides me with an opportunity to take in the natural beauty of the park.

This is Spindle, which is at it's loveliest in autumn. As you can see, it's fruit is bright pink and has orange seeds.

The bench by the sculpture of Humphry Repton is a favourite spot for many visitors. It sits in front of a great oak tree and provides a lovely view of the park. However, it was time to coppice the sycamore that had grown back up behind the bench, as it was obstructing the splendour of the oak.

The view before....

 

and the view afterwards...

Back in the east woods, we continued clearing and opening out the trails. There was also more sycamore lopping, this time pollarding a couple of established trees amongst a planted bed along the edge of the woods.

We had a bit of a job removing a metal tree guard surrounding a young sequoia that had become outgrown. We managed to remove the securing bolts from the top and middle section, but the ones at the base had rusted solid and the ground stake it was attached to had been concreted in. It was decided to angle grind the bolts off at the base and leave the ground stake in place. Some of the lower branches also needed removing. Once this had been done, we still had to carefully bend the larger branches to enable us to remove the two halves of the guard.  

October 19th was a very warm and muggy day, and the overnight rain had subsided to a few spots.

With storm Babet's heavy rain approaching, it was time to revisit the rainwater run-off point near Church Street entrance. More drastic measures were necessary as previous downpours were damaging the hoggin path. It was decided to dig out a channel to help direct the flow away from the path - we shall soon find out if it's successful!

Other jobs included removing more ivy - this time around a brick pillar at the Church Street entrance, and cutting back nettles etc around a couple of planted beds.

Before....

After cutting and strimming...

The highlight of the day was finally getting the ok to drive the kawasaki jeep (Zak) around the park.

Look out for my next post in a few weeks time!