We were out on Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 26) scraping the worst of the mud and twigs off of the path near Little Hob Moor  and marking out the path edges with logs, ready to spread a layer of gravel (hopefully on Thursday).

James and Malcolm had a useful day on Sunday 23rd February.  Between showers they started to remove mud and a lot of twiggy material off from the main path.  A lot of this material was the aftermath of storms Ciara and Dennis.

After adding 8 bags of pea gravel as a top dressing there was a considerable improvement.

We have started planting out Poppy, Cornflower, Scabious and White Campion plug plants in and around the meadow.  These were  grown by MCT over winter and hardened off to improve biodiversity in accordance with our Management plan agreed with CYC.

A well-rooted Scabious plug.

Great to have Chloe helping improve the Poppy patch that she helped set up in 2019.

Nice to see the Blackthorns MCT added 3 years ago coming into flower again on February 18th 2020.  We try to have something in flower all through the year for pollinators.

A very successful AGM on Feb 3rd 2020 with 21 attending (and 13 apologies!).  We got 2 new members, pushing our total up to 76.

At the end of January 2020 we are starting to add more shrubs to start screening off the red brick wall extension beside the back path at the N.W. end of the site.  The photo below shows Mike Ridealgh after he had helped Malcolm plant the first of the new trees and shrubs.

This one had been grown on for a year to give it a larger root ball to help it establish more quickly in the heavy clay soil in this area of the site.

It was good to see the snowdrops doing well beside the path on Sunday 19th January.

Cold but sunny on 19th and 20th January.  Good conditions for Malcolm, Adam, Tim and Louise to remove (for safety reasons) a large, dead branch of a willow overhanging the path near Little Hob Moor.  On Monday we also cleaned some graffiti from the back of the information board and rescued a beech tree planted a couple of years ago which had got smothered by bindweed last year.

  Adam using the pole saw at full extension

The rescued beech tree with a new stake fitted.

On January 10th Malcolm & Louise took advantage of the sunshine to fit the new top to the vandalized bench beside the path.

We hope you enjoy our efforts to beautify Mayfields North of Nelsons Lane for both the public and wildlife management.  Annual subscriptions (still only £5) are now due for renewal for 2020 and can be mailed to the MCT Secretary, Louise Cresser, at 30 Goodwood Grove, Dringhouses YO24 1ER.  You can copy the membership form from the Membership page on this web site into Word, or simply provide the appropriate details on plain paper with your payment.

Not much happening on the site in the first week as we have been working on restoring the damaged bench.  A useful job to do in the conservatory we also use for growing wildflower plug plants.  Many thanks to Paul and Lesley for help with bench repairs and to Tony and Frances for a very generous donation towards the bench restoration costs.  It really boosts motivation when people tell us how much they enjoy our  efforts to keep Mayfields beautiful.

A Happy New Year to all.  We were out on January 1st checking possible ways to restore the burned out bench, and also because we had been notified about a dangerous heavy branch that had snapped off and was hanging over the path near Little Hob Moor.  Malcolm managed to pull it down and break it up for removal,  It had been attacked by bracket fungus and was very brittle so we will need to check the rest of the parent tree.