Rubble at t'mill (1)

The last time Sarehole Mill had any extensive work carried out was in 1969.  Wear and tear has worked its wicked will on the buildings but now funding has been granted to give the mill much-needed tender loving care.  Toilets were installed a few years ago in the old stable block and a cafe is now in regular use.

New slates will replace damaged and friable roof tiles.  Water seeping its way through the brickwork has been denied entry.  Access to the first floor and the milling machinery is now by a sloping wheelchair-friendly path around the back.   The original access is still available for those nimble enough to climb up the steep and narrow ladder should that be your desire.   I have been known to ascend that way myself, on occasion.  Fortunately for me, you cannot descend that way.  A one-way system exists to see the mill machinery and the new exhibition: ‘Signpost to Middle-earth’.

Creating the new path meant removing overpowering, overgrown, laurel bushes and dark and
 uninspiring trees and roots.  This left behind empty beds except for the crops of Edwardian house-bricks buried within, not to mention remnants of greenhouses past.  The cleared beds became The Gaffer’s Vegetable Patch and Sam’s Flower Garden, reflecting J.R.R. Tolkien’s connections with the Mill.  

Last year, 2011, on one particularly rainy day, I took it upon myself to plant the flower bed,  with many, (that is many, many, not to mention muddy), perennials that would, hopefully, attract bees, butterflies and birds.  And they did!  The bed was transformed.  Unfortunately, current weather conditions have not favoured the bee-hive that has been installed at the mill.  But the flowers were quite wonderful and the vegetable patch flourishing.  A variety of shrubs were planted in a desolate bed alongside the mill path leading to the back of the mill.  Subsequently, a fernery leading to a tiny woodland was started and a woodland path was cleared through a holly cave leading to this young, but enthusiastic copse featuring, in the spring, young and enthusiastic bluebells.

More plans are afoot.  The mill pool is to be dredged at long last over the autumn/winter.   The mill wheel has only been able to run for short bursts. Deep layers of silt in the pond were stirred up badly when the wheel was running.  The aroma was interesting.  Acidic, not to mention aggressive undertones, with a tad too much oxidisation.  Next year, milling can start again and flour produced for sale.  Plans are in hand to restore the bakery.

Before

After

     
Draining the pool had a knock on effect.  Not least because I have not seen the crane that was a frequent visitor.   Hopefully he or she will return when conditions are favourable.  The lesser spotted woodpecker was undetered though.

Current Condition

Because the silt removal will mean deeper water, the pressure on the old wooden sluice gates will be stronger.  These are, therefore, being replaced even as I write.  Watching the mill pool during the months since it was drained has been fascinating.  It was, to say the least, quite appalling how much grey slimy silt there was.  The amount of water must have been about 6".    As it dried (earlier in the year), it looked like an old oil painting with its ancient glaze fractured.  Then came the rain and now the sunshine and it is currently sprouting quite amazing and, I think, attractive growths of bright green and yellow plant life across the whole surface.  Well worth a visit in its own right.

After the summer season is over the mill will be clad in scaffolding and the silt lifted from the pond.  We should be patient, however, for come the spring the mill will emerge from its cocoon, like the butterflies we are trying to encourage.

The mill is open until the end of October from 12.00 to 4.00 every day except Mondays.  There is a charge to look round the mill but the grounds are free to wander around, perhaps after a cup of tea and cake in the cafe.

A Balsam Bashing Day

It has been Balsam bashing time along the River Cole.  Himalayan Balsam is an annual plant, growing head high, or in my case, even higher.  It has extremely pretty pink and occasionally white flowers. 

Do not, I urge you, be influenced by the pretty pink and white flowers.  This plant is a marauder swamping our equally pretty indigenous wild flowers.  The invader must be pulled up, cut down, bashed firmly, and with both feet, until the roots are squidged flat and the stems squelch, noisily and juicily.  Very pleasing!  Saves pounds in counselling fees.

The work should be carried out before the flowers form and the seeds spread.  One plant can produce 800 seeds.  These can be caterpulted by the plant up to 7 metres away.  Balsam being a damp loving plant, populate the sides of streams, which of course create a liquid highway for seed adventuring.  This presents another opportunity to wade in the water to pull up seedlings along the river-banks.  With the inevitable wet socks to follow of course.  Am I too old or possibly even too small, for waders, I ask myself?

Balsalm bashing has been an annual event along the River Cole over the last couple of years and it has been gratifying to see our natural wildflowers re-occupying their rightful place along the river-bank - confidently by cow parsley and nettles, more timidly from Ragged Robin or buttercup.

What a year it has been for Goosegrass.  Turn your back for a moment and there it is, threading, climbing, lurking everywhere, drooping like fuzzy ribbons of green.  And sticking!  Especially sticking!

This is another annual plant.  It uses tiny hooks on its equally tiny fruit to catch onto passing animals, including humans.  It can of course, be gathered up in quantity and formed into a green ball to throw at one’s companions but that is surely for children.  Adults find it merely an added irritation accompanying this gardening season which is passing by wetly, cloudily and with just the odd day of sunshine to give us hope that the marigolds are not entirely past help.

Other names for Goosegrass are (and I quote with no added comment):

Beggars’s Lice, Catchweed, Cleaverweed, Bedstraw, Everlasting Friendship, Scratch Grass and last but not least, Sticky Willie.

Moseley Bog

Over the years I have become involved with conservation groups associated with Moseley Bog and along the River Cole.  Volunteers coppice woodland, pick up litter, dead hedge, pick up litter, scrape duckweed off ponds and pick up litter.

I find litter picking very satisfying.  I do use the ‘professional’ litter pickers but constantly squeezing the grips makes my hands painful.  Also it is difficult to aim accurately into a bramble patch harbouring a nest of empty cans.  Best wear strong clothing and gloves and plunge right in, I say.  What’s a thorn in the side compared to a bum thumb.  Of course being made redundant in the litter-picking department would be better.

I have become quite the expert at dead hedging.  It is very agreeable  opening up a glade with coppicing to let wildflowers have some breathing space and using the accumulating branches to fence and protect that space.  Mini-mammal highways!

At my age donning wellies and standing in muddy water is a particularly satisfying occupation.  Not something I thought I would be doing that often after age 10.    Forget the fact that you quickly become aware that your balance on rocks and stones is not quite as stable as it used to be and being only 5’ 2” means the water gets into your size 4 wellies quicker than someone who is 6’ 2”, wearing size 10 wellies.  It is fun and no-one is going to tell me off.   Might have to investigate wader possibilities.  Extra small!

Why would you be standing in muddy water, I hear you ask?  Or possibly not but I shall tell you anyway.  In Moseley Bog there are some burnt mounds with a river running through.  Well, not a river exactly, but on occasion, like most of this year, an extremely impertinent, fast flowing stream.  The action of the water washes away the small stones and pebbles that constitute the burnt mound. Current thinking suggests that burnt mounds were bronze age sauna’s.  These stones are old and cold now, but three thousand years ago they might have given you a pretty good blister.

Anyway, pretty nifty hazel fencing is created to line the banks through the burnt mound area which means volunteers wading into the water and holding posts whilst they are hammered in.  The posts not the volunteers.  Hazel rods are threaded in and around the posts and pressed together.  It’s like weaving but wetter. 

A hot sauna seems quite appealing by the time you’ve finished.

www.shirecountryparkfriends.org.uk.

Pottering About

I love gardening.  My Dad loved gardening.   I remember him giving me my first little patch of ground just outside the greenhouse.  Admittedly it was only 1 foot by 2 foot and full of candytuft but it was a start and it was mine. 

An early memory is being chauffered to the allotment in the wheelbarrow.  Such style.  Fortunately, I have never suffered from sea-sickness.   Of course I had to walk back, said wheelbarrow being full of goodies from the allotment.

In the meantime, I grew up, married, had children, watched children depart for university and jobs, hither and yon.  The bare patches on the lawn grew green.  Or blue, depending on how well the speedwell is doing in any one year.  Sometimes it’s dotted white with daises.  Now and then it’s green but that is the moss.

In the meantime I pottered in the garden.  Dad always liked bedding out plants.  Twice a year all plants were removed.  Summer bedding made way in the autumn for spring bedding.  I did the same.  For a while! 

Our garden is quite large.  Bedding out plants have been replaced with perennials and shrubs.  It’s taken 41 years to mature.  However, now, when I have the time, I find lack of stamina means I spend that time in short bursts rather than the, all day while the boys play in the sandpit, sort of time.

Consequently I work very fast and then ache everywhere afterwards.  But oh, the bliss of a hot bubbly bath, and oh, the stiffness when scrambling out afterwards.

I wear gardening gloves now.  It is of course too late.  My hands and lower part of my arms are covered in brown splodges.  There is no way they could be described as freckles.   Too much sun on bare arms! 

There seemed to be more sun then.