Tuesday 27 October 2020
Today has been a bit of a slow one – but much needed. It started with a beautiful sky show on the way to work, with a tangerine wash of colour filling my view all the way in. Grumble as I may about the clocks going back, I felt very luck to be able to catch that sunrise on my cycle today.
Today really was a study day, with us only leaving the depot for two and a half hours to fill some containers with soil. The rest of it has been spent behind laptops, trying to catch up on missed college work and get up to speed with our Learner Journals.
The containers we filled have been affectionately named the ‘COVID planters’, as they are technically new sites hat have come about during and because of the pandemic. They will be planted with small trees and shrubs and have socially-distanced seating arranged around them. From what I could see on the planting list, there will be a lot of birch trees collared by a ring of liriopes at the bottom. I also spotted some Osmanthus aquifolum on the sheet.
Much like a lasagne, when planting up a container with a tree, the layering is very important. Coincidentally, we got the order all wrong and spent ages shovelling leca out of the planters. We should have started with a layer of Terram (a geotextile that allows moisture to pass through but won’t allow bigger particles such as leca or soil to pass through and mix), followed by two bags of leca. Then, another layer of Terram was placed on top and we shovelled in the soil. To make sure the soil level was correct, I hopped into the containers and treaded the soil, to find any gaps and remove large air pockets, before filling it to the desired height.
As the trees are only being delivered tomorrow, when we’re studying from home, we did not fill the containers to the top and instead only filled them halfway. This will allow space for the rootball to be placed without double handling of the soil.
Tomorrow is all about catching up on the work I missed while my laptop was being serviced and I couldn’t complete classwork virtually. Wish me luck!
Lili Barras-Hargan 