Three Snowmen

With snow comes the arrival of snowmen around the college grounds. Three were found following Friday's snowfall, the largest, was found on the orchard.

The second snowman had walked up the stairs at the back of the Provost's lodgings, and the third, wearing a blue scarf, a big smile, and a welcome wave, was found in front of the pavilion.

The Predicted Snow Arrives

The heavy snowfall predicted today started at 9:00am this morning, quickly settled and continued to fall throughout the day.

The gardeners, our volunteer, the groundsmen and the maintenance team spent the day clearing the snow from the paths and scattering them with rock salt to reduce the build up of ice.

Oh What Stories This Tree Could Tell!

Worcester College has a few very large, very old, Plane trees in the grounds. Believed to be a few hundred years old, one such tree can be found in the middle of the lake side border. Ivy had started to creep up the wide trunck and needed to be removed. Simon and Ady cleared the ivy but couldn't resist standing amongst the huge branches, oh what stories this tree could tell!

Opening Up The View

Another perfect job to keep the team warm was to start the clearance and tidy up of the lake side border in order to open up the view that has, for so long, been blocked out by large overgrown shrubs. The first task was to remove an old Willow tree that had recently fallen into the lake. Too heavy for the team to lift out, the New Holland tractor with the grap attachment had to be used lift it carefully out. The tree was then chopped up into sections and placed at the back of the border on the Broadwalk to create a new log pile for the insects and small mammals of Worcester college to live in.

The team worked their way along the border, with what felt like every tool from the tool shed. Every kind of chopping implement was used to cut back the large overgrown shrubs, tree saplings were dug out and leaves raked out.

All the woody, cut down material was taken down to the chipper and chipped into a ornamental wood chip mulch. The leaves were take down to the compost heaps and any unusable weedy material taken to the skip.

By the end of the day the first third of the border view had been opened up. In the coming weeks the remaining two thirds will be tidied but the shrubs not cut back so hard, the hard cut back will happen over the next few winters as the project to restore the view continues.

Potting On

With the temperatures outside still freezing, and the ditch cleared yesterday, Ali, Callum and Graham spent the first few hours of the morning potting on half the cuttings taken last September.

The Perfect Way To Keep Warm

In freezing temperatures and falling snow the team, along with the groundsmen, went looking for a job to keep them warm, they ended up clearing out the ditch that runs around the sports field. A contradiction in terms, trying to keep warm and working in a ditch in freezing temperatures with a few inches of water in it, but it really did keep the team warm, apart from those who weren't wearing wellington boots or had newly discovered holes in their shoes. Raking and forking out wet, heavy leaves and debis from the ditch into wheelbarrows and trucks for transportation down to the compost heaps was the perfect way to keep warm.

To Enhance The Winter Reflection

Having planted the trees in the morning, Ali and Graham moved on to work on the border next to the weir. Working at the waters edge, the marginal plants needed to be cut down. The marginals were planted when the weir was reconstructed in September 2010 and the Iris pseudacorus (Yellow Flag Iris) flowered for the first time last year, see blog entry 8th June 2012 'Marginals In Flower'. The reason for this cut down was to allow the Salix and Cornus, see blog entry 23rd April 2012 'Turf & Bark', to reflect their stunning winter colours onto the still water on these warm, sunny winter days.