Well what a superb series of open weekends we had this year. Thanks to you, our visitors, we made a significant amount of money for Essex Wildlife Trust and had an interesting time chatting with you too. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
The new information room has been delayed by the dreaded planning permission process which is taking longer than we had envisaged, but it will be worth the wait. It will be built as a result of a very generous donation by a visitor, Mr Johnson, in memory of his dear wife.
I stood down as chairman of the Warley Place Management Committee at the May meeting, after six years in the position. I have been succeeded by Mick Hedges and with Richard Barklem continuing as warden Warley Place
Interesting that the foxgloves haven't been up to their usual standard this year. Actually there are a lot of them about, but they are scattered rather than in impressive swathes. I suppose it's something to do with them being biennial plants. I rather like taking pictures of insects and they seem in short supply so far this year. Well the interesting ones are. The ones that bite seem to be as numerous as ever.
Digging up the bamboo, which was spreading rather in the boating lake, has been a tiring job but a necessary one. I suppose it's a shame there is never any water in the lake, even in the heaviest rain, but there's no chance of us trying to make it watertight again.
What with the bamboo, and the docks in the turning circle and walled garden, to contend with there have been a few sore backs amongst the volunteers during the past few weeks.
The cattle will be joining us again soon and they have a lot of work to do in getting the grass down. With their coming presence in mind Richard went round checking the fence posts and found that a lot of them, 18 I think, needed replacing because they had rotted. The original posts haven't lasted at all well so Richard stands new ones in a barrel of creosote for a week before using them, which should alleviate the problem.
John C
