July ended with a useful amount of rain and, on 31st, more raking off of tall, dry grass cut with the strimmer. Good to see wildflowers starting to re-emerge.

A mix of routine jobs up to July 27 in several sessions. The drought killed off a number of small shrubs and trees but not many. It finally started to rain fortunately but only after we had done more watering of young trees and shrubs. We removed some dead plants in the woodland areas and did several strimming and raking sessions of parts of the meadow dominated by flattened dead grass. On the 27th we used a mower set at 5 cm to collect up more of the grass (that raking had missed). Meanwhile Louise did 2 sessions of litter picking.

Louise and Malcolm (that’s him as the shadow below) added another 80 litres of water to the soil round the Jubilee oak on Thursday July 14, not as hot as earlier in the week but trees need a lot of water in a drying wind (when recently planted especially). Kathryn and Mark helped with the same job earlier in the week.

On July 9th and 10th Kathryn and Malcolm braved the heat to finish a few outstanding weeding jobs and adding needed tree stakes.

On 2nd July Malcolm and Kathryn relaid the 4 paving stones someone had deposited in front of one of the 3 MCT benches to create a level surface over a weed barrier. It is now safer and looks neater.

A couple of days later an Oak tree was planted on little Hob Moor to comemorate the platinum Jubilee of H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Second. MCT was one of the sponsors and also took over 100 litres of water to assist with the planting conditions.