Καλησπέρα!
First of all, thank you for posting comments on my blog, and for your kind words of encouragement! It’s a wonderful feeling to know that friends and family are keeping an eye on me, so I promise to keep this blog rolling!
It’s been a short week for me due to illness; nevertheless, we were pretty busy with our woodland management activities in Clifton Country Park and Clayton Vale. I also started designing a new BTCV Health & Safety flyer, which is starting to shape up nicely.
Clifton Country Park comprises of approximately 48 hectares of beautiful countryside in Salford, with woods, meadows, ponds, a lake and remnants of the city’s industrial past. The sun was peeking a bit through the clouds which added warm colours to this cold wintry day. We started tidying up some existing habitat stacks and started a fire to burn some unwanted branches (and keep us warm!) Alan showed me some basics of hedge-laying, which was really interesting, and we focused on coppicing some weak shrubs and bushes until the end of the day – there are lots of hazel bushes scattered around.
On Wednesday we returned to Clayton Vale, where we focused on eradicating blackthorn bushes, which are curiously referred to as Prunus Spinosa in Latin. Blackthorn produces sloe berries, which are delicious, especially in the Icelandic Ursus Vodka – one of my favourites! May have to return in October, when it’s berry-picking time… Make sure you wear special hedging gloves though cause their prickly thorns can be poisonous!
We then headed to a different part of the park which had been overgrown with brambles and dead trees. These brambles, otherwise known as Prunus Fruticosus, can be a real nuisance, and you’ve got to be careful of those nasty thorns when working around them.
Let’s see if February brings us more snowfall… may have to dress like an onion for week 4!
Look at those thorns!