27 July 2023 Beechbrae barrier building

Damp and humid at Beechbrae today, where we spent time building a barrier from coppiced hazel branches to prevent dogwalkers from taking a shortcut across a sensitive piece of land. Clouds of flies everywhere, even with lemon balm leaves rubbed all over our skin, so we were glad to retreat to the polytunnel, where we we trimmed the flowers off the rocket to keep it growing without going to seed, and we rescued some baby hazel trees from an overgrown planter and potted them up. Later, I whittled some plant markers for use in the polytunnel, and learned about courgettes (they have male and female flowers, a swelling behind the flower shows it will turn into a courgette). Also got a new 'staff' to decorate after my trip to Canada.