Saturday 20/6/25 There haven’t been any work parties for a month due to volunteers holidays, so we had a weekend work party to get started back at the mill. As we drove in we noticed the wildflower meadow has poppies, cornflowers and chamomile but not as many as the first two years, most flowers are on the sloping bank.

The other gardens are flowering well, with coreopsis, foxgloves, viola and different coloured cornflowers in front of the visitor centre, and dianthus next to the wall. Poppies have come up on the river bank and around the small oak tree, and lobelias planted recently are in flower around the memorial tree. 

We viewed the nest camera screen in the wagon, great tits have fledged as expected, but a stock dove is now sitting on an egg in the barn owl box, so we’ll watch its progress. Stock doves nested in this box last year.

The grass had grown but we couldn’t take our ride on mower today as there was no petrol available, so I cut the area in front of the wagon with the push mower and cut a path to the visitor centre and shed while Eddie strimmed all the edges as well as around the seats and grindstones, then pulled up hemlock in a few places using thick gloves.

Last month I took the insect hotel home to repair as canes kept getting pulled out by birds. I cut some extra canes and drilled holes through them as some had solid centres, then glued them together and held them in place using a glue gun. I removed screws at the bottom, turned the wooden trim over and re-fitted it with panel pins which looks much better. I brought the hotel back today and refitted it on the stand in the meadow.

Anne Marie joined us and saw swans and four cygnets in the river on her walk to the mill. Anne Marie put canes and wire supports in to hold up the sunflower plant and fallen cornflowers and foxgloves, then watered and weeded all the gardens as they were overgrown after a month. We saw brown trout in the river beside our wall while working near the river bank.

We moved our outside table into the shade of the cherry tree and had lunch, which was convenient as we could reach up and pick ripe cherries from the tree for our dessert, we also filled our lunch boxes with some to take home, as the birds will soon eat the rest. I noticed something in the hole of the tawny owl box across the river, I got the binoculars and we could see it was a young kestrel about to fledge, Eddie spotted others on top of the box and in the tree, one was testing his wings.

In the afternoon Eddie and I cleared tall weeds and nettles in front of the exposed soil where the river wall fell, as birds are nesting in holes there and the vegetation was covering them, preventing birds getting in and out. We used our pole pruner and extending loppers from the top of the river bank and from the ladder. A swan swam past while we were working there, and on our way back to The Maltings we saw families of greylag geese on the lake, the goslings have grown much bigger, and a heron standing on the grass where the rivers converge.

Graham Bartlett  

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