HEAVY PLANT

I bet that title has got you wondering what I'm going to write about ... and no I'm not going to show you photographs of substantially tall trees or a giant pot grown specimen.

But plant wise, I saw my first primrose flower the other day, sadly too slug eaten to take a photograph of. Normally at this time of year the primrose plants are looking good as they come up through the grass, but they seem reluctant at the moment and I'm not surprised after all the weather we've had, ranging from damp to almost drowned. There were also Oxeye daisies still in flower in the old churchyard but the unseasonal holly which was flowering  a week ago had no blossoms on it yesterday. But ... the autumnal colours have been better than expected, the sad thing has been how fast the leaves have fallen off the trees. Just two days ago I went down to where the weir project has finally finished and in the wind I watched as a tree across the river was shedding its leaves at great speed.

And no, that is not the heavy plant I have used as a title, but sorting out some of my photo files, I came across some pictures of the men driving the heavy plant machinery and thought it might be interesting to show you some of the conditions they were working in.

The above was taken when the lower weir was about to be demolished, by what I can only described as a great big mechanical "knuckle duster". One of the guys explained to me that the concrete used almost sixty years ago was easy to demolish due to the fact that unlike the mix used in the newer design up river, this had not been reinforced with steel.

It has been a pleasure to meet the guys working on this project, they were cheerful and put up with all my questions about what they were doing and why. They had to cope with all the weather conditions that the last few months have thrown at them. As if working in the flow of the river wasn't enough, they had to cope with the water falling from above!

All the above photo's of them working were taken on one of our rather rare sunny days.

In one area there were huge piles of earth building up that needed shifting. Just look at the size of the dog compared to the big yellow truck that was constantly moving several tons of stone and a lot of the stuff that had been dragged out of the river as part of the reconstruction project. Lovely rounded boulders that had gone through years of being rounded off by fast flowing water have been replaced with much chunkier, sharp angled rocks, many weighing as much as three tons! No doubt in time, they too will have their sharp edges worn away and the river -scape will begin to look more natural.

The above photo was taken two days ago, just look at the difference. Gone are the big piles of earth, the  big yellow monsters have moved on to another river rescaping project.
But just look at the trees in the background ... very little autumnal colour. The trees have have already shed their leaves and are looking so bare . But looking ahead to a year on, I look forward to seeing how this expensive river re-designing project works out. Maybe next Autumn won't be such a short termed disgrace. Maybe the salmon, trout and eels will have migrated further up the Ebbw river. Meanwhile the heavy plant and the guys that have worked so hard have  moved on to work on other river regeneration schemes. I wish them all the best, they were a lovely bunch of hard working guys. So there you go, that was the heavy plant I was waffling on about. The herons have to find new fishing sites, the  sadly devastated local landscape has to regrow ... but given time  ... who knows!