Good to have Sabrina joining us as a volunteer on Mayfields to work towards her DoE award. In a double session on Monday 22nd August we made a start on the Meadow’s Autumn trim and and with trimming excessive material growing through and/or over the fence into the playground.

Malcolm spent an hour replacing a broken height adjustment rod on one of our older Mountfield Battery mowers on August 4th. At £26 for parts it’s a lot cheaper than buying a new mower and lets us keep using the older style of batteries.

Look for the shiny grey plastic (the new part).

Later that day Adam Cresser helped Malcolm for 2 hours to reduce some of the vegetation on the bund competing too successfully for water with the maturing trees we need to maintain.

The offcuts are cut up and left as a mulch.

The climate change-induced drought over most of July has had a big impact on Mayfields. Trees have responded by translocating nitrogen back to the roots from leaves resulting in brown edges to leaves and then leaf fall. This is their mechanism for reducing their evapotranspiration and water use. If it goes on for too long some trees and shrubs die, The tall grass on the meadow tends to get flattened on Mayfields. When rain was forecast for a few days we removed some of this by strimming and raking in selected areas and were please to see some of the protected wildflower species re-emerging as the areas greened up. We had an evening mowing volunteer session on 3rd August to trim back dead grass stems on some of the main path verges with the mowers set to 4 – 5 cm.

Mowing on August 3rd made good use of our new battery mower and an older one.

We’re grateful to the Dringhouses and Woodthorpe Ward of CYC for funding the new mower.

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.

Mike and Malcolm managed to finish strimming the grass beside Nelsons Lane on June 28 and rake up the cut material for composting elsewhere on site.

Still no rain on Saturday morning (June 25), but at least it was cool enough in the shade to spend 2 pleasant hours reducing the velcro plants, docks, nettles, brambles and excess buttercups that were starting to starve some of our recently planted shrubs of water and light.

Malcolm went out for an hour and a half of strimming at just after 9.30 on Friday before it got too warm, cutting back grass that was taking much-needed water from round young trees and shrubs.

Sad to see one of the MCT information boards vandalized on 16th June. We’ll attempt to fix it for now as a replacement costs almost £1000.

Really warm on June 16 but Malcolm managed an hour of cutting down nettles and brambles about 4 feet tall growing against the fences of 3 or 4 Hob Moor Terrace houses.

Kathryn noticed a pair of large willow branches that had broken off of a crack willow at the N end of the site, overhanging an adjacent property.. She later came out with Mark and Louise to help reduce the overhang to a safer level. We’ll try to cut the remainder down later in the week.

On Tuesday 7th Lesley, Paul and Malcolm carefully re-laid the 4 paving slabs someone had deposited on the grass in front of one of the MCT benches beside the path. This was necessary because they were protruding over the grass edge and nowhere near level, posing a trip risk. They were re-laid at a better depth over a double weed barrier and horticultural sand. It disturbed an ants nest, not surprising as the slabs had just been dumped on the surface.

Testing the re-laid slabs. Lesley also managed an hour of mowing.

Malcolm managed a 3-hour session on Thursday 2nd June, mainly mowing but some nettle reduction.

Mike and Malcolm were out on Thursday May 26th, finishing (well almost) restoration of the width of the path to the underpass and doing some verge mowing later in the day.

On May 20th we decided that the nettles and other plants encroaching across the path to the railway underpass needed reduction to keep the path safe. It was done by hand-weeding rather than strimming to help reduce the soil fertility (and hence regrowth) at the path edges in the longer term.

Before and after shots show why the job was needed. As usual one of the local robins watched on, looking for lunch.

Mike and Malcolm did some trimming of the overgrown grass and rose between the gate and the playground on the morning of May 19. Malcolm went back in the evening and finished the job (well almost!).

Another excellent session on May 7th. Lesley mowed the tall grass in several areas while Kathryn, Mark and Malcolm trimmed back overgrown dead and living blackthorns and dogwoods starting to emerge and block the verge on the north west side of the main path.

Malcolm managed to trim the grass and Ground Elder crowding out the native English Bluebells at the northern end of the site on Thursday morning.

Good to have Kathryn’s brother Mark joining us again on May 1st to help with mowing and trimming some lower over-extended oak branches beside the main path.

April has been a busy month for our volunteers, reducing some overgrown or dead trees and lots of mowing the path verges as well as a fence repair and selective plant removal in new shrubbery area.

Hopefully the last remaining sheet of board will soon go too!

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Just a rminder about the MCT AGM at 7 p.m. on Tuesday March 15th at Dringhouses Library. The meeting will start with a short presentation from Malcolm Cresser showing MCT activities throughout 2021. The business meeting will follow.

Lovely day on Sunday 13th, so we had our first mowing session of 2022 on one of the more sheltered areas of the site.

A useful 2-hour session with Kathryn and Malcolm on Saturday 12th. The removed a large, mainly dead, branch of willow suspended in a fork between 2 tree stems.It took several stakes. Later Alan Marsden cut up the material cut off in the composting area.

Clearing up after storns like Storm Eunace takes some time and safety is one of our prime concerns. Malcolm and Mark and Louise Crozier did a good job on 2 damaged trees on Saturday 19th of February, and Alan and Malcolm tackled a few more on Sunday Feb 20.

Someone managed to knock down the main gate off Nelsons Lane on February 10th by demolishing the gate post. Malcolm and Lesley made it safe that night using chains and padlocks, Alan, Paul and Malcolm took a couple of hours in the morning on Friday 11th to support the old gate post with straight and right-angle brackets as a more secure temporary fix. Later Malcolm also gave the gate a much-needed coat of wood preservative.

A useful session on Saturday February 5th 2022. Kathryn and Malcolm trimmed the rose near the bench beside the path to stop it overhanging the path and dug out the grass encroaching onto the path where it was reducing the path width.

FINALLY REACHED A TOTAL OF TEN THOUSAND HOURS OF VOLUNTEER TIME WORKING ON MAYFIELDS SINCE MCT STARTED BACK IN 2012.

Malcolm cut the offcuts up in the composting area on the following Friday morning.

On 27th January Mike and Malcolm trimmed the trees overhanging the Yorkshire Water box on Nelsons Lane and a gtree overhanging the main path. Mike dragged the large felled branches up to the composting area to be cut up later.

We were delighted to have a new MCT member, Alan Marsden, join Kathryn and Malcolm on Sunday morning on Jan 23rd to help trim the guelder rose shrubs in front of the maturing Ash trees beside the main path.

Kathryn and Malcolm spent a pleasant hour and a half on Saturday Jan. 22nd removing another limb of the 4-limbed Alder beside the Nelsons Lane playground. It had to go to make more water/nutrients available to the 2 remaining limbs in extended periods of dry weather in summer. It was also growing into the adjacent tree.

Looks even better after adding another 10 bags on 12th January! That’s 39 in total so far.

Seemed to be working well so added another 5 bags of gravel on January 11th to widen both strips.

Kathryn and Malcolm were back out on Mayfields on January 8th, assessing priority jobs for the volunteers for the next few months. Top of their list was adding pea gravel to both sides of the main path at the Little Hob Moor end to provide a drier walking area with safe social distancing. They were back out with Louise on Sunday 9th to add 7 bags of gravel to each side of the path.

This is a lot better but more will be needed.

Another useful leaf and twig clearing session on Sunday 19th December, this time just inside the Nelsons Lane gate.

Managed to treat fence with wood preservative on Friday December 10, so had time for clearing twiggy litter off of grass and paths, felling an excessively spindly overcrowded birch and trimming the ash tree on Nelsons Lane wrapping itself around a street lamp, all under a heavenly blue sky at about 11 degrees C on December 12th.

Kathryn and Malcolm started to repair the Nelsons Lane fence on Saturday December 4. They managed to get the 2 broken lengths of wood off, and measured up to replace them with new wood, hopefully on Sunday morning.

November ended with a few very stormy days that brought down many twigs and branches onto the main Mayfields path. Not surprising that December started with clearing as much as possible off the path before it got trampled to much and turned to mud.

Leaf-fall has been very heavy and prolonged in Autumn of 2021. The session on November 22nd was about number 8 already, but another useful 2 hours to minimize future mud formation on the main path over winter.

Just 2 hours made a big difference as the photo below shows!

Malcolm and Kathryn finished mowing the wildflower meadow and turned their attention to clearing leaves from the main path and mowing verges. On Sunday 14th though they felled one of the 4 limbs of the Alder which was struggling for water earlier this year beside the playground on Nelsons Lane.

Great to have 7 members of GoodGym helping Malcolm, Louise, Kathryn and Lesley on November 6. They trimmed the final corner of the meadow and reduced the overgrown Dogwoods west of the main path.

Another 2 hours on November 5 was enough to finish the SE corner of the meadow.

Lovely day for more work on the Meadow on November 4th. Malcolm did another 2 hours of trimming grass, joining up the patches cut on October 30th by our good friends from GoodGym. He even managed to clear leaves off the path for an hour too to keep mud development there under control.