Today’s work party took place in fine weather. We were able to resume woodland work now it is autumn, and we focused on removing some of the many small Norway Maple and Sycamore trees from the vicinity of the western path. The drill bit for making holes for glyphosate plugs was missing (presumably lost at the end of last winter), so we were limited in terms of poisoning the stumps (although eventually a substitute bit was obtained and we were able to treat some of the stumps). We did manage to uproot a good number of saplings, and a few larger specimens were felled and poisoned. Unfortunately there was a lot of regeneration where we had cut back in the past without treatment, and the roots were far to established to remove. In these cases plugs would have been tricky because of the small size, so a lot of these were just cut back to the ground again, in the hope that surrounding vegetation will eventually crowd them out. David distributed some more stones to sections of the paths, and we brought down the usual amount of litter. A huge den in an area we don’t normally go to was too big to tackle and needs to be reported to the authorities.
