Holiday Mud Larking and Hay Making

It was a beautiful holiday weekend with soft, slightly misty, early autumnal mornings, gloriously sunny afternoons, and a cooling breeze off the sea. So what better way to spend your days than alternately floundering about in a muddy pond trussed up in a wet suit, then sweating buckets cutting and raking hay? It was the first time either of our two ponds, each about 4m across and up to 1m deep, has had a serious clear out since we made them 10 years ago, so I knew it was going to be a challenge. Armed with secateurs, shears, a pruning saw – none of which is great to have around an expensive butyl pond liner (!) – and an assortment of trugs, sieves, nets and a tarpaulin, I set to with vigour and vim, to emerge from the murky depths a shattered husk about two hours later. Who knew that the roots of Bogbean Menyanthes trifoliata could be so enormous and that once neatly planted baskets of aquatic plants could so easily become fused into one astonishingly heavy mass that literally had to be hacked apart?

Surf's up! I donned my wetsuit to tackle this monstrously overgrown pond...

The fruits of my labour.

By contrast, hay making was light relief. Thanks to the fine, settled weather, we have been able to tackle it in stages this year. This makes it easier on us and also much better for wildlife, which is able to adapt to a slowly shrinking area of long grass, rather than a sudden disappearance of the whole lot in one day. In the photo below you can see that the area at the top of the slope has been cut and mown, the middle section has been cut and is drying out to allow the seeds to fall, while the lower section is still standing meadow, with Black Knapweed and Devil's-bit Scabious continuing to flower. We have seen several Common Blue butterflies in this area recently, including the magnificent male pictured. Best of all, we disturbed a Slow Worm when raking hay last night and managed to get a couple of photos before releasing it, perfectly unharmed, into an uncut area.

Going, going, gone... Three stages of hay making

Black Knapweed Centaurea nigra

Male Common Blue Polyommatus icarus

Our meadows are home to Slow Worms Anguis fragilis

Early-morning dew on spiders' webs in the meadow