The start of the year is always a quiet time in the woodland, but there’s typically general maintenance to do somewhere! At the start of January 2023, we welcomed 2 volunteers from the local “Good Gym” branch. We welcomed Julian and Marta to our volunteer morning. It has been quite a while since we ventured in to the woodland’s “other half” over on Lasseter Place.

Bramble, snowberry, fallen trees were all in the wrong place. Snowberry, while providing winter food for birds, can be very invasive so much so that it can swamp all other flora.

With hacksaws and secateurs, we started to remove the plant, as well as brambles and ivy. An unexpected find – or rather lots of them – were several footballs and tennis balls which must have come flying in from the gardens of adjacent Ulundi Road. Goal!!!

Over the last few days, the committee members have been in the woodlands and below are some of the wonderful photos that were taken.

The last volunteer morning of 2022 took place yesterday. At this time of the year, very little is happening in the woodland, but 2 important events took place; the selling of our own honey (as well as honey from the Isle of Dogs farm) and checking the bird boxes. Before 1pm, we had sold several dozen jars of local honey, all stock had been sold, an amazing achievement. The other main task at this time of the year is to check, record and if necessary empty out the bird boxes. The accompanying photos show committee member Nigel Duncan carefully inspecting the boxes. The photos below show him looking at several of the boxes in the woodland, as well as a nest that was removed in one of these.

The remaining photos show a very quiet time of the year in The Glade area. There wasn’t a single bee seen flying around, but as the temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, this wasn’t too surprising.

Finally, a reminder that the next volunteer morning is Sunday, the 8th of January, one week later than normal as it would have meant that our first day of the year would have been on New Year’s Day.

This coming weekend, Saturday 3rd December and Sunday 4th December, we will be selling our honey produced in our very own hives in the woodland on our Christmas fundraising stall in Seren Gardens car park, located next to the entrance to the train station. We will be there from 10:00 until 3:00. We will also be selling bargain wildlife books and informing people of the woodland.

There were more than a few crossed fingers earlier this week as the weather forecast didn’t look too good for Saturday afternoon, but in the end, the rain stayed away, the sun popped in and out and it was unusually warm for the time of the year.   We got off to a quiet start, just a couple of visitors in the first 30 minutes, but then things got in to the usual stride and by 5 o’clock, some 70 or 80 or so people had come to visit the woodlands. 

One of highlights is our own honey from the several beehives.  We were worried with the very hot and dry Summer a few weeks ago that this would reduce output, but in the end, our hives produced another large harvest.  On the day we sold 32 jars.  With the money from our refreshment stall, as well as 2 new members, our sales for the day was just over £300, a very impressive amount which all goes in to the maintenance of the woodland.  

In the end, we still had lots of wonderful people, with a mix of regulars and first-timers.  The children had some very creative open-air time with craft making and talks, as well as the opportunity to meet members of the woodland committee and to meet neighbours too!