Kick-sampling

Kick-sampling is a technique for assessing water quality in the wild. I've done some kick-sampling myself. Heck, I've taught kick-sampling. Almost the only time I ever used the Lidl middle-aisle fisherman's waders were for kick-sampling up to my knees in a stream.

This year, for the first time, we're doing something different with our traditional hay-meadow: harvesting the seed to [potentially, hopefully] propagate wild-flowers away from our nursery. We were requested-and-required to remove and Ragwort Senecio jacobaea from the meadow before harvest. Insects and pollinators like the bright yellow flowers but the whole plant is generally poisonous to live-stock, especially horses. It is a prolific of seed which are wind-dispersed, but the plant is a biennial, so a rigorous regime of uprooting [traditionally by small farm-children] will eventually get the scourge down to manageable proportions. Every year, if we look, ragwort will be found; but only a few scattered plants which are a distinctive green at a moderate distance and have unmistakable leaves close-up. Ragwort is thus a 101 task but it takes a little time to course systematically over the estate.

We were also instructed to remove "thistles". As I found last year, there are two closely related thistles common in Irish fields one of which Cirsium dissectum is a desirable indicator species and the other Cirsium arvensis a terrible creeping thing altogether.  But in the priorities of seed-collection it is Caedite eos kill them all - or at least stop t'buggers propagating.

Accordingly, over a couple of days, whenever the spirit was upon us (and it was not drizzling - for who wants wet socks?) one or other of us would sally forth with clippers and a feed-sack to heap cut thistles into sheafs and dump them at the field margin. 

Gotta say that it's the best sort of work: necessary, a bit physical, a bit mindless, in the fresh air <hello trees, hello sky>, WFH. I clocked off several hours of my then current ear-book The Education of an Idealist [2019] by Samantha Power: one time Dubliner [Hartigan's], one time war reporter [Bosnia]; one time US Ambassador to the United Nations [Obama]. It is readable and gives good insight about how firm beliefs and election manifestos turn squidgy under the pressures of Realpolitik. Despite pre-election promising to close up Guantanamo Bay, Obama was still its commander in chief at the end of his 8 year presidency.

I show-and-told the results of seed-stripping 10 hay-rattle plants. One collateral benefit of coursing over the meadow, stalking and killing thistles was to fill my loosely tied boots with misc wildflower seeds. It was striking a) how much of the kick-sampling was hay-rattle seed b) the huge discrepancy for seed-size among different species [from much smaller than a poppy-seed to big-as-tomato-seed] c) the wild variety of seed shape and seed-appendage and d) how each adaptation might help a seed get somewhere else and then get a grip on the earth and still have some oomph to get something green above ground to start photosynthesis. Chekkittout: