Sunday 30th September 2018

For the first time for a while nearly the whole crew were at Rais this Sunday. Ant, Flee and Tracey with Finn, and me all were there to start the autumn rohdie chopping season. Of course the most important member of the team is still gallivanting round Africa, but she was missed.

This week autumn seems to have been put on hold, it's been warm and while Sunday did have some clouds there were sunny spells as well and hardly any wind. There is a steady slow rain of leaves from the trees but overall the canopy is still more green than red.

I arrived first and fed the birds as usual, they are definitely more interested in the food now the leaves are falling. I also noticed that the tarp over Cassisus was sagging a bit as the bungees have lost some elasticity so I tightened that up a little before the others arrived

It was a busy day. Ant was chopping rohides on the stream bank in the north west corner, Flee and Tracey, with some help from Finn, were clearing brambles and bracken in the wayleave on the other side of the dam and I was carrying on from last week and attacking the rhodies at the top of the steps towards the shower. It was tough going as it was very dense and full of brambles so I have a new set of scratches to add to my collection.

There were some breaks for tea of course, and it was good to catch up, although Ant suddenly got camera shy when he realised I was using a "smart" phone (we had just been talking about how Google and Facebook track you).

Finn added some excitement for us when he managed to bite a wasp, then get vary agitated when he realized what it was. Apparently he was stung recently, but he was lucky this time. Tracey solved the problem by thoroughly squashing the wasp with her boot!



Ant left around 3 and the rest of us stayed until about half 5 and made good progress. Flee and Tracey cleared a great section in the wayleave,

Ant has a good pile of stuff to drag out









and I nearly managed to cut back all of the rohdies, generating a huge pile, and nearly filling up the gully with cuttings in the process.


The chestnut which had been growing around the rhodies is right under the power lines so will, unfortunately, have to go and it will be a big fire next time to get rid of all the cuttings so far.


Wandering around at the end of the day I noted that the hot summer obviously agreed with the sweet chestnut tree. I mentioned it last week but  it is really loaded with fruit, particularity at the crown.

and the weedkiller I put on the rohide stumps is perhaps working better than I had first thought as they are all looking in a worse state than a few weeks ago, I guess it takes a while to work.






Over by the top shed a bird had obviously come a cropper as there were quite a few feathers scattered around, but no evidence of an actual kill so maybe it got away.

The sun was well on it's way as I left and the light certainly has an autumn feel to it just now