Last Friday we cleared the already trodden paths of weeds and laid down woodchip. This was on a nature reserve that we manage, tucked away at the back of the Laisteridge Lane University of Bradford Campus.
The most exciting thing for me was when I hit stone under the soil with my fork along a few metres of the path. It was buried under a thick mulch of woodland matter but I scraped it back and voila!: there was one ready made section paved with stone! I have yet to find the extent of it but it seems quite wide. It could even turn out to be a sort of patio rather than just a narrow path. More digging next time!
The site has been through different uses. Long ago it was farmed and before we started managing it as a nature reserve it had been run as a garden. This has sparked my interest in it's history and I will try and find out more.
The Robins on the site are always completely unflustered by our presence. One landed at my feet as I was talking. It paused a while and then hopped into the undergrowth. We also saw a red damselfly and an azure blue damselfly. We can identify these after we invited an expert down to our open day last week. Children who turned up from the local community had a great time. One family was literally the nearest flat which was part of the university halls of residence. They particularly seemed to enjoy the pond dipping and they also made bird feeders and lacewing hotels. They didn't want to touch the huge and rather alien looking dragonfly nymphs though!
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