From Potato to Planet

The busy natural world.

This is a lovely time of year.  The wood is  brimming over with wildflowers, bees, birds and insects.  Not so many butterflies about this year, Lots of Hover Flies and other flying beasties.

Hover Flies

Cardinal Beetle

Six-spot Burnet moth on Yellow Rattle Seeds

 The logs that can be used as an outside classroom, have been  tipped over. Let's hope that this will be the only thoughtless prank during long  summer evenings!

The re-arranged children's seating area

Teasel flower heads in the sunset.

After heaving the logs back into their original upright position, I took this photo ofa very prickly teasel plant. I wonder why?

The wood's looking good

The rides have been given a second cut, avoiding most of the clover and other wildflowers.The bees, butterlies and moths are emerging.

Wildflowers are sprouting

We had our first working party this year, to cut back the hedge that runs alongside the public footpath in the wood. We removed a lot of the brambles that were rampaging in the undergtowth and generally trimmed back branches.
All the hedges surounding  the wood are old and have  mature and coppiced trees dotted along them for added interest. Sadly the hedge that we were working on today is atarted to have gaps in it where animals and people cut throught from the meadow.Ways of restoring the hedgrow was discussed as we worked and we decided to block an expanding gap at the back of the play equipment, to encourage the children to use thenearby bridge acess into the wood.
Those people who use Facebook might like www.facebook.com/BucklesWood
or you might like to see more people at work on Flickr 

Help from B.T.S.

B.T.S -- the company of tree surgeons that keeps the elctricity cables free from overgrown trees, has trimmed back  the hedge at the rear of the wood. Usually they shred and clear away the cuttings, but as you can see in the photo-- they piled the offending overgrowth into neat piles for us to cut up and use to make small animal habitats amongst  the trees (brilliant)! THANK YOU B.T.S.

Frozen asset