Testing our mettle against stinging nettles

Aston's Eyot is a 32-acre island in Oxford. It might not be obvios that it's an island, but it’s delineated by the River Thames, the River Cherwell and Shire Lake Ditch. It has been a Victorian rubbish tip, leased to bottle diggers for a period from the mid 1980s, and in the early 21st centrury a bit of a tangle o'bramble. Now it’s a mosaic of woodland, open area and scrub, and a haven for wildlife. The site has been sensitively managed by the Friends of Aston Eyot for the last decade, and they now have an official lease from Christchurch (who own the land).

This summer the Friends have been working on creating a wildlife pond and boggy area, which we have helped with on a number of Wednesday sessions. So far we've reprofiled the edges of the pond, moved piles of logs to create hibernaculums within a newt's crawling distance of the pond, and helped dig an area next to the pond to create a boggy habitat. Last night we split into digging and scything crews (there's always nettle scything needed on Aston's Eyot) and got straight to work. Diggers worked up a sweat and dodged Victorian broken glass to get the bog patch so nearly ready to lay the tarpaulins which will keep the moisture in. One more digging session and it'll be ready. Scythers and rakers channelled their inner Poldark (but with better scything technique, of course) to chop down the nettles and thistles popping up in the meadow areas. Mind the daisies though! A third wildcard task was to move a pile of nettles a few yards so that meadow plants could be sown in their current location. We approached this with long sleeves and trepidation given that the nettles seem to have recovered their viscious sting after the recent rains (what we assumed was a growing immunity to nettle stings turned out to be that they lost their mojo in the heatwave). We needn't have worried too much as it seemed that the nettles had been in situ for quite some time and were a dried out tangle. Of course, we still managed to acquire the odd sting around our ankles - is it GoodGym without a nettle sting or bramble scratch? - but it was the nettle-ageddon that we had feared.

Corgi family tree in the photos thanks to Holly. Welcome to GoodGym Hannah and congratulations on getting to the 10 Good Deed milestone Sam.

Good to meet you in-person Ivo.