Yesterday with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust

Good afternoon one and all and welcome to the last blog of this week documenting the many voluntary roles young Alex Ashworth is maintaining in and around the community of Lancashire.

It's been a fortnight since I volunteered for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust as part of the Bees, Butterflies and Bikes group so it was high time to make another visit to this eco-friendly group.

Yesterday I arrived at the allocated location spot ( outside The Anderton Arms pub in Fulwood ) promptly as ever at 9.45am. It was slightly cooler and raining a little so I decided to put on my waterproof mac. I waited anxiously for lead Chris Taylor to come sailing past in his van. 9.59am and he arrived right on cue.

I sat in his van for a while until the second and final volunteer arrived at approximately 10.05am. We made our way to the Guild Wheel Cycle Path and after a brief demonstration we all planted, in total 600 Yellow Rattle Plugs. Chris explained to us both that they are very useful in Wildflower Meadows as it is a parasite of grass and therefore hopefully stops the grass taking over.

Work was well and truly under way for the intrepid trio. One volunteer on the far left of the path of grass, me in the middle and Chris on the far right. All it took to plant them was a small scoop of soil from the trowel place the Yellow Rattle Plug in the hole then firmly seal with your fingers.

It wasn't a race but if it was I'd get bronze, Chris silver and the final volunteer gold as she completed planting them in the shortest time. Patch number one :- complete.

It was time to make our way to the second patch of grasslands to plant the next batch of Yellow Rattles. As we were walking there we recognised other elements of nature and how plants were blossoming in spring and enjoying the solitude of the countryside.

Once the second batch was complete we had one final collection of Yellow Rattles to plant then our time was up for another session.

Initially, Chris had it mind to place some canes round some trees but with the excess number of Yellow Rattles to store into the ground there was little time for extra gardening activities.

As we were working on the final batch we had the pleasure of seeing a series of dogs investigating our handiwork and barking at us as we endured. I think they were more interested to see if we had any doggie treats, much to their disappointment, we did not.

The clock struck 12noon and our fellow volunteer had called it time, I was getting tired too actually. She departed but Chris and I continued for another quarter of an hour, then, we were done.

My last conversation with Chris before I said goodbye for another fortnight was to identify the plant we planted, which he did.

I'll be back with LWT On Wednesday May 25th.

This is Alex Ashworth signing off for yesterdays excellent session with LWT.