Marshian copse

We noticed that earthlings plant trees to celebrate moments that are important to them.

They grow a tree in a nursery, usually in plastic pots underneath a plastic cover.

They drive to work and water them. They use cameras to take pictures of them and computers to let everyone know what they’ve grown.

Someone else takes hard working tax payers money and buys one. A truck delivers the tree to a yard, and another one takes it to its final resting place. They dig a hole and add something they think the tree might like, and plant the tree in the hole. Despite all this nurturing the tree is sickly and needs a lot of care. It needs two sticks to hold it up for the next two years. In summer a truck drives up to it and pours gallons of chlorinated water on the ground around its roots.

Or it doesn’t and then it dies.

Marshians have a very important celebration this weekend. Although they have been visiting the marsh for years and years it was one earth year ago that we decided to take the marsh into our care properly. We couldn’t leave it to the earthlings any more.

One thing we’re going to need is willow trees. We need them for many reasons. We need oxygen and clean air. We need to lock away some of the carbon earthlings keep producing. We need a lot more wildlife. We want moth caterpillars to eat some of the leaves.

We want cuckoos to eat some of them.

When the beavers arrive they’ll need willow to eat and build lodges from.

We also need wooden poles to make things out of, baskets, fences, tool handles, art.

So to celebrate we planted a copse.

We selected a particular willow for our copse. One that grows fast and tall, thin and straight. And pliable.

Willows are wild. They’re tough like anything wild would have to be. They grow naturally around the marsh. There are many different types, some have beautiful red twigs in winter, some are old and full of owls and grubs. We want them all and more.

We also have a road at one end of the marsh. Earthlings rush up and down this road, spraying pollution and noise and we’d like to not know they were there. So we’d like to hide it, pretend it isn’t. Planting willows along side it would help. Sorry, willows, you’ll have to endure that road for us.

But we don’t have money, so no access to trees delivered with their roots in plastic bags. But we do know how to get willow trees for free.

Proto Marshians once planted 100s of them. Just poking fresh twigs into moist soil is all it takes.

We cut 20 poles of willow and carried them from deep in the marsh to near the road then cut them into lengths. We stomped a bit of the marsh and pushed the willow deep into the ground. They’ll root. In spring they’ll send out new growth. In a few years time they’ll be big and tall and we can cut them all down. Then they’ll regrow, more vigorously and more densely than before. And they’ll keep doing that as long as the sun shines and the rains fall.

The rain did fall that day. Cold wet persistent rain that got more persistent as we wended our way home through the marsh.

The next day the sun shone. It was very pleasant, warm and still. A year ago exactly Storm Bert struck, and during the storm, cozied up in a pub, the Marshians fledged.

One day we were a bunch of mates trying to improve the marsh and the next we had a whatsapp group with people we didn’t know. Yet.

We arranged a stomp, and a month later 60 people turned up. They arrived as earthlings and left as Marshians.

So in the anniversary sunshine we cleared some more of the marshy fringes.

On the anniversary of that stomp we’re going to have another one.

One thing we discovered recently was that the areas we stomped last year have got many more wildflowers growing among the grasses. But the areas we cut and stomped have got the most.

Not only did stomping provide a habitat for birds but scything and stomping benefitted lots more wildflowers some of which we hadn’t seen before.

This autumn we’ve been busy. Up to 6 people scything every weekend the traditional earthling way, and many more raking and pitchforking and building haystacks. We’ve cut a much bigger area than we stomped last year and we’re still doing it. Right up until the 21 December.

Then we’re going to stomp. Big time. We’d like to poach the ground like a herd of cows would do. The churned up mud will expose seeds and provide a very special habitat for things as varied as Barn Owls Damselflies Buttercups and Snipe. But we want to do it quickly.

If hundreds of folks turn up for an hour on one day the impact will last a year. And maybe next year we’ll do it again!

In between now and then we have a lot of ideas of things we’d like to do.

That night right after we’d finished scything we had a party.

Twice as many people turned up as I was expecting. They brought three times more food than we could eat. We partied for half as long again as we planned. And half the people we needed stayed behind to clear up.

But in between the entertainment and the mingling and the eating we had a few minutes to talk about what we might do in the next year.

This time last year we never had a plan, just dreams. Those dreams, of a rich wetland teeming with life, are coming true. Now we have a fledgling plan. Next year we’re going to fly!