janey

Yeah, us bikers stick together On a serious note, this whole women in the industry, women on the tools, can women climb as well as men blah blah blah topic gets very tedious and I get quite irritated by it. My gender has never been an issue in this industry. And I will never let it be. We are all individuals with our own merits and if anyone is stupid enough to stereotype me because I am a woman, then they are not worth my time and they are certainly not worthy of being called a professional.

One down, only several thousand to go

Aw, that's sweet

I love the descriptiveness of a lot of the scientific names. They can tell you a lot about the specimen's size, shape, colour, habit, place of origin and so on and can be helpful with ident's.

Can you see where the avenue is due to end from where you want to start, if you see what I mean? If you can, then you can borrow the old Roman road building trick for straight lines. Place a fencepost, stick, spade, willing or not so willing assistant, anything slim and vertical really in the starting position for your avenue (post 1) and another one in the finishing position (post 2). To get some more markers for the avenue in line with these first two, squat (if necessary) behind post 1 and visually line up post 2 until it cannot be seen as it will be directly behind post 1. You can now get a helper to add in more markers into this sight line while you keep checking that they are in line with 1 and 2. I hope this makes sense?

Thank god for a bit of, gasp!, common sense . Man, woman, straight, gay, bi, black, white, Asian, Christian, Jedi.... Does it really matter? Attitude and physical and mental ability are the important issues, not someone's gender. I've worked with lazey women and lazey men. I've also worked with hugely talented and inspiring women and again, men. Yes, there are very few women in arb' and forestry (3% according to LANTRA). I don't think this is an issue unless we make it an issue. With so much positive discrimination towards women (which I don't agree with, btw), we, as a gender, have far more opportunities and funding available than any man coming into the idustry. Is this fair? Is this equality? Does this mean that women are somehow more suitable to work with trees? No, it doesn't. It just means that someone in a position of power has deemed that that there needs to be a more even proportion of men to women, regardless of an individual's apptitude towards the job. I've worked bloody hard to get taken seriously as a professional arboriculturalist, not a female arboriculturalist, please note. I am an individual, with my own strengths and weaknesses and my gender is totally and utterly irrelevant. Which is how it should be for anyone.

Ha, you can try the ministry of silly walks method, where you set your stride to 1m and then pace the length of the soon - to - be avenue and make a good guesstimate of the length from the number of your paces. Or, the more boring way is to use a large scale map and then measure the distance off of that. This method is nowhere near as much fun or as entertaining for any bystanders. A single ave' is one single line of trees. A double ave' is where you have two lines of trees running parallel to each other, like what you would have either side of a road.

You're missing out. Oh, the fun we have down the pub, relaxing after another hard day's inspecting, chatting about our petreas and canariensis'...

Now to mention it, I can't remember seeing many either this year. I found this on UK Butterflies which may partly explain what you've noticed: "The Small Tortoiseshell is one of our most-familiar butterflies, appearing in gardens throughout the British Isles. Unfortunately, this butterfly has suffered a worrying decline, especially in the south, over the last few years. This butterfly has always fluctuated in numbers, but the cause of the most-recent decline is not yet known, although various theories have been proposed. One is the increasing presence of a particular parasitic fly, Sturmia bella, due to global warming - this species being common on the continent. The fly lays its eggs on leaves of the foodplant, close to where larvae are feeding. The tiny eggs are then eaten whole by the larvae and the grubs that emerge feed on the insides of their host, avoiding the vital organs. A fly grub eventually kills its host and emerges from either the fully-grown larva or pupa before itself pupating. Although the fly attacks related species, such as the Peacock and Red Admiral, it is believed that the lifecycle of the Small Tortoiseshell is better-synchronised with that of the fly and it is therefore more prone to parasitism."

What's the length of the intended avenue and is it a single or double row?

These are, rather bizarrely, also called Robin's pin cushion galls. Since when has a small song bird had need of sewing utensils???

That's one of them funny posh fruits, innit? Don't get them fancy things here in chavcity Northolt. (I was being ironic, in that it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the obvious comparison with an edible thistle and a parasitised acorn )