Update from the commons
As I write this the weather is starting to steadily warm. We had some frogs back in Fir Tree pond this morning, the first ones since early March when we had a couple of warm days. They laid a fair amount of spawn then but with five weeks of bitter cold since, I had given up on that assuming it would all have died. So it was with real surprise that I saw a number of tadpoles in the pond this morning as well. I imagine that the survivors must have come from the centre of the spawn mass but even so, they are clearly tough little things.
In spite of the difficult planting conditions, all of our thousand wildflower plugs are in the grass next to London Rd and look like they are taking already. They were lovely little plants with big root systems and they should do very well as the season progresses.
We have at last found the source of the problems at Brighton Lake where the ground has remained sodden in one area ever since we carried out the de-silting work last autumn. We have discovered that an old clay pipe feeding a spring into the pond has collapsed, probably because of all the heavy machinery running across the site. Now we know what we are dealing with it should be easy to replace it with a new plastic pipe. At the same time we will be putting in another new drain under the newly opened Terrace.
Work now turns to grass cutting and we have managed to make a good start on that already. We have just completed our second cut and have got the grass down quite low, meaning that we should be able to get neat finishes early in the season this year.
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