More Parsley

Hedge Parsley doesn’t get as much of a hold as Cow Parsley here, these being found near the main road. It comes later than Cow Parsley and is quite a delicate plant and rather likeable, its leaves being much finer than those of the coarse Hogweed which flowers at the same time.

These ones have been lucky to survive a visit from SWT’s  volunteering group. The group arrived one Friday to do some management concentrating on this bridleway with easy access from the road. Some of them strimmed the edges of the track and others bashed away at some bracken. I guess that the volunteers were recruited from some local firm that likes to assume a community friendly or environment friendly profile. There are apparently quite a number of departments and firms in the private and public sectors whose managers think it’s great for their staff to be doing this – its’ considered good for team building and showing that the employees are one happy family which extends to life outside the workplace; and SWT can then make claims that it has such good relations with ‘the community’ that it can point to all these ‘volunteers’ though you would have to judge for yourself whether there is a more voluntary kind of volunteering. And it would be interesting to know how many come back a second time. What it’s certainly not is ‘local community involvement’ though SWT’s promotional literature probably spins it as such. The true test of this volunteer work should be whether it’s good for Blacka Moor; I guess that SWT are concerned more whether it’s good for SWT.