The Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University asked us to help monitor their network of bee boxes, and you'd better bee-lieve (bee-l-hive?) we jumped at the chance for an evening out in Wytham Woods.

There are 74 bee boxes in Wytham Woods, set up for monitoring the nesting habits of solitary bees. Unlike honey bees solitary bees are extremely unlikely to sting, even if picked up. Our plan was to divide into small groups to cover different routes in and on the outskirts of the woods, hoping to get to at least half of the boxes before the gates were locked at 8pm.

Armed with a googlemap of the box locations, logging sheets, and smart phones we fanned out in all directions in search of the bee nest boxes. Our routes varied from 1.8 miles to 3 miles long, so there were options from the jogging group and fast walking through to a leisurely walk. Rachael's Monday evening walks proved to have been excellent training for hiking fitness! We should have an award for best outfit, as Vanessa's sequin bee motif on her trousers clearly brought her and Holly luck, as they actually spotted one of the bees.

Monitoring the boxes is a great citizen science project - you don't need any knowledge of bees or their behaviour, just a camera and a willingness to explore.
* At each box you take 4 photos - 1 of the metal tag showing the box number, then a close up of the box, a photo of the box in the landscape, and finally a photo of the view in front of the box.
* If you're great at identifying trees and wild flowers you can log details of the surrounding vegetation. Many of us used Plant Identification Apps for this - we recommend Plantnet or Seek. Both are free.
* Finally you count up how many of the tubes in the box have been sealed and what materials have been used to seal them (usually mud or leaf matter) - although counting those is sometimes easier by zooming in on the photo afterwards!

Over the next week or so Alex will be a busy bee logging our data with the Department of Plant Sciences. We did our best to reach 48 boxes, although some were missing or inaccessible when we got to their locations. That is important data too, so we will report that back to the project. You really are the bee's knees!

This is an ongoing project, and we have been asked to return to monitor the bees again in the early Autumn. If you're still buzzing from an evening of woodland fun and you'll bee visiting the woods again before the autumn then please do more monitoring. There are also boxes dotted around Oxford City (also pinned on the google map). You can report your photos and observations direct to the Department of Plant Sciences on their googleform which you can find HERE.

You can find out more about the Plan Bee project and about solitary bees here.
You can access our googlemap of the box locations in Wytham Woods and Oxford City HERE. If you tap on the box number on the map it will give you extra info such as habitat and landscape features, orientation etc.

Many thanks to Task Force for their enthusiastic WhatsApping providing me with so many puns!

Six goodgymers boldly applied their SPF, wore appropriate clothing, and journied to Florence Park to help Naturescape with the next part of their garden project.

The original invitation was for pond digging but the pond space needs more fundraising before it can be built. Instead we were tasked with helping to lay the sensory path which meanders through the garden.

The path is made up of individual tyres, dug into the earth and then filled with soil and topped with a variety of materials; smooth pebbles, woodchip, sandy grit and aromatic plants.

Digging homes for the tyres was sweaty work. They all need to be level to ensure an even, safe path. Holes were dug, spirit levels employed, little bits of soil added or taken away here and there.

****We all left craving ice-cream and cold showers but it was a wonderful task and so fantastic to see the progress of this exciting space.

Congratulations to Samantha for her 50th good deed. Your black t-shirt awaits!

Aston's Eyot is tucked away beside the river and is one of our favourite Oxford wild spots. They've just completed a (very on-trend) vaccination programme to immunise their badgers against TB, and now the focus returns to nature reserve management to encourage greater biodiversity.

Meeting us at the tool shed Ruth explained our tasks for the evening would be clearing nettles from one of the best areas for wildflowers in Aston's Eyot using a combination of scything and weeding out by hand. Removing the taller nettles should allow the smaller flowers to thrive. We actually cleared nettles in the same patch a couple of years ago, so it was nice to be back at the same spot with some of the same people.

In the wildflower meadow we grasped the nettle with enthusiasm. It was oddly satisfying pulling them out by the roots and revealing the smaller wildflowers beneath the canopy of stingy beasts.

A few eyes lit up at the sight of the scythes, with Sarah and Katie taking first go and wooshing through large patches of nettles, before handing the blades around the group for more people to try. Afterall, it's not often someone lets you loose with a scythe.

Scything proved both satisfying and therapeutic after a long year or COVID-frustrations!

Some of us were definitely more savvy with our clothing options for nettle-work than others. Not ideal: shorts and vests. Good choices for nettle work (although a bit steamy for 26 degree heat): head-to-toe waterproofs.

Having amassed a massive haul of nettles we had to consider whether we could be making good use of the 'weeds'. Matt reliably informs us that the first nettle harvest of the year is the best one for cooking, and as they also seem to be the fiercest stingers we figured there might be a certain satisfaction to boiling them up after the pain we have endured from them on GoodGym tasks over the last couple of years!

Our top 3 options:
* Nettle Tea
* Nettle Soup
* Beating ourselves with them for warmth, just like the Romans

Badgers proved elusive (well, they are nocturnal), but we were treated to the sight of a muntjak deer wandering across the path at the end of our session, apparently supremely unconcerned by 25 people staring at it!

Some exciting milestones last night: Jeremy did his 10th Good Deed and Vicky did her 100th - Watch out for Vicky in her winged Tshirt soon! Anwen reached the unofficial milestone of 250 Good Deeds.

We welcomed our first GoodGym tourist since the pandemic, with Chi joining us from Haringey.

And finally... welcome to Meysam - Thanks for joining us for the first time!

Who's the best at nettle weeding? STING!

What do you do when your Community Garden is one side of the railway line, your delivery of woodchip is the other side of the railway line, and the only route between the two is a pedestrian bridge?
Call in GoodGym muscle of course!

Having tackled the Steps of Doom a few weeks ago helping Hogacre Wild Wallow, and being expert shovellers these days, we were confident we were up to the task. Of course, we had reckoned without the mini heatwave making every small movement a sweaty endeavour, let alone climbing up and down hundreds of steps hauling trugs of woodchip. No wheelbarrow accessible ramps here! However, we are not a team to admit defeat on such flimsy grounds, so we set to work...

It turns out that woodchip which has sat in a large heap for a few weeks creates the perfect conditions for mushrooms and a significant amount of it's own heat due to microbial action. So much so that it is not unheard of for piles to burst into flames (don't worry - it's rare!). We definitely felt that heat as we shovelled and hauled up and over to Hogacre Common (do they really need to build railway bridges so high?!). No morels or portobello mushrooms were spotted in the destruction and reconstruction of the woodchip pile; disappointing but not sure there'd have been mushroom for them amongst the other OxGrow crops anyway.

Numerous trips to and fro, spotting new graffiti masterpieces each time, efficient workers that we are we actually finished ahead of schedule. Our hard work was mulch appreciated by OxGrow and so we were rewarded with some spoils from the garden - chard, mustard leaves, chives, radishes, a couple of stalks of asparagus.

To keep you in step on our next wood chip task, try this tongue twister used by Anna and Vicky to distract from the many many stairs:

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

"In 1988, state wildlife conservation officer Richard Thomas of New York attempted to figure out just how much a wood a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck was capable of doing so and had the inclination. Woodchucks don't actually chuck (throw) wood, of course, but, since they are a burrowing rodent, they do know well how to toss around some dirt. So Thomas took to calculating a typical size of a woodchuck burrow, which consists of three rooms and a tunnel leading to it that is roughly six inches wide and extends 25 to 30 feet. He determined that 35 square feet of soil needed to be excavated to create such a burrow. Knowing that a cubic foot of soil weighs 20 pounds, he calculated that a woodchuck can chuck 700 pounds of dirt a day. Should a woodchuck be so inclined, Thomas concluded, he could chuck about 700 pounds of wood."
More fun facts about the origin of the tongue twister here.

Well done Rachael for completing your 50th GoodGym Good Deed!

For more news from OxGrow follow them on Facebook here.

Thanks to Anna, Vicky and Matty for the puns!

Third time's the charm path-building at Boundary Brook Nature Park!

Over three Community Missions we've been constructing a network of wheelchair-friendly limestone gravel paths. Today we had an S&M Saturday (Shovel and Mattock) pun courtesy of Pete, with lots of barrowing for good measure.

Our novice mattockers levelled the sloping muddy paths off, while the gravel work gang shovelled and barrowed the mountain of gravel across the Nature Park to extend the paths we built on our previous sessions. By two hours in we were finally hitting the soil under the tonnes of gravel, and really scrapping the bottom of the barrow to get the job done.

The die-hard wheelbarrowers counted in excess of 9000 steps - many steps make light work of path building - while shovellers reported a strong core and shoulder workout. The new paths now extend out of the Boundary Brook Nature Park along the (previously) very muddy path the locals take to the allotments: Long may they keep their feet dry!

The paths just need some final smoothing out to make them passable in a wheelchair. It's all about enjoying the journey.

Oxford Urban Wildlife Group Website is here.

Thanks for the puns Ben!