To Taymount Woods, the Long Way Round
We met up at the Taymount Wood car park, Linda and I, put on our boots and turned away, not into the gate. This was to be the long road to the woods, a circular walk via the disused railway line which once ran as a ponderous branch from Stanley across the River Tay to Coupar Angus.
Community Monthly Update April 2021
The Community Consultation has been a great success and we are in the middle of evaluating all the results and comments (which are really inspiring and useful) …… a huge Thank You to everyone who completed the WSWG Community Consultation Survey!
Give me Shelter!
A recent walk to Five Mile Wood on a blisteringly cold and windy March day forced an awareness of how open it is – and that gave me this month’s challenge right away. Part of the means of rising to the challenge may come from the gift!
Community Monthly Update – March 2021
Well, the biggest thing by far we have done this month is launch the WSWG Community Consultation on our new website. Huge thanks to Perthshire Websites for doing such an amazing job for us and to consultant Chris Collins for pulling together the WSWG Proposal Consultation Report, Maps and Survey Questionnaire to make this all happen. Both have worked magic for us above and beyond their remit.
Whose Woods Are These? I think I know…*
This is the first in a new series of posts for West Stormont Woodland Group. From fear or repeating myself, I thought I’d write about the fact that each month, the woods have a Gift for us. And every month, there is at least one challenge that faces us – whether physical, philosophical or organisational – in contemplation of owning woodland as a community.
Community Monthly Update for February 2021
West Stormont was the name used in medieval times to cover the parishes of Auchtergaven, Kinclaven, Logiealmond, Moneydie, Redgorton (Stanley) and the Murthly portion of Little Dunkeld. West Stormont has been chosen as the most suitably inclusive title for the many communities connected to Taymount and Five Mile Woods today.
Working with local people to bring
Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community Ownership
So it’s January 2021. What has WSWG been doing this month?
West Stormont was the name used in medieval times to cover the parishes of Auchtergaven, Kinclaven, Logiealmond, Moneydie, Redgorton (Stanley) and the Murthly portion of Little Dunkeld. West Stormont has been chosen as the most suitably inclusive title for the many communities connected to Taymount and Five Mile Woods today.
Working with local people to bring
Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community Ownership
“Little Acorns, Great Oaks” by Margaret Lear
It’s a bit like walking on ball bearings in some woods this year. They slide away under your feet and you slide with them, temporarily on arboricultural ice, until crack-crack-crunch, and you’ve squashed them. The little oak-trees-in- waiting. Acorns. Acorns galore. 2020 is what’s called a “mast year”, when all the oak trees seem to produce more acorns than it is possible for the squirrels, mice, jays and other nut-inclined creatures to harvest or store.
Monthly Community Update for December 2020
West Stormont was the name used in medieval times to cover the parishes of Auchtergaven, Kinclaven, Logiealmond, Moneydie, Redgorton (Stanley) and the Murthly portion of Little Dunkeld. West Stormont has been chosen as the most suitably inclusive title for the many communities connected to Taymount and Five Mile Woods today.
Working with local people to bring
Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community Ownership
“Last Leaves Falling” by Margaret Lear
I pause on my way through the woods, quietening my breathing, keeping as still as I can. There is no sound, there is no wind. There should be no movement. Yet within the vascular systems of the broadleaved trees that bound the track, small enzyme changes are at work, invisible changes that lead to letting go, abscission, leaf-fall.