While waiting on Buckstone Road for the Friends to arrive, your correspondent spotted this beautiful butterfly enjoying the sun. It is a comma and the more studious reader will recall that on the 13th August 2013, we spotted a comma caterpillar in the vicinity – see here! Perhaps today’s butterfly was the adult of that very caterpillar! [NB if you click on the photographs, you will see larger versions].
Before…
Our tasks today were threefold. Judith went off litter picking. Brian, Tom and Beth cleared the path by the Slabbering Baby, which had been reduced to about three feet in width, and then went off litter picking. Last, but not least, a team of six of us helped Steve Joul dredge the pond of silt.
…after!
As usual, the pond dredging task proved extremely muddy – which seemed to enhance the pleasure of it for certain members of the team. Three of us were in the pond, in newly purchased waders loaned to us by Leeds CC, filling plastic trugs with mud, and three of us were on the bank taking the trugs away and emptying them nearby. Ade was a star turn, managing to find numerous large logs which had been dumped in the middle of the pond. However, concern was expressed that his clothes might clog up 
his mother’s washing machine unless rinsed clean of copious amounts of mud beforehand.
The sight of us in the pond caused a number of people to stop and ask what we were doing. Let’s hope the publicity brings us more volunteers.
Yet another beautiful morning in the woods and a very satisfying sense of achievement.
Friends of Adel Woods 