A Day of Dedication and Progress in Didsbury Park
A REMINDER ABOUT THE ARRANGEMENTS FOR DAVID'S FUNERAL TOMORROW:
David's funeral service will take place at 10am tomorrow morning at St Catherine's Church, School Lane, Didsbury. At the end of the service all Friends of Didsbury Park volunteers in attendance will be asked to form a guard of honour outside the church doors. The plan is for us to wear our hi-vis vests and applaud David 's coffin as it leaves the church on its way to the hearse. David's coffin will then be driven to the cemetery for burial, It will be accompanied by Brenda and close family only. After the funeral Brenda will return to the Parrswood Pub where a reception will be held. During the period when David's body is being buried at the cemetery everybody is invited back to the cafe in Didsbury Park where teas and coffees will be provided after which we can make our way to the reception.
TODAY IN DIDSBURY PARK
Once again we had a fabulous turnout of 51 volunteers in Didsbury Park this morning. Our regular volunteer numbers were boosted this morning by the involvement of 6 volunteers from the Co-op Bank (see picture 1) and 9 volunteers from Green Energy UK. In addition we were pleased to see Julien and Charlie again who were attending independently from business and Xin with two family members - plus one of our Chinese students from last week. We were also pleased to welcome Geoff who came to jump start our sit on mower and take away our broken mower for repair - thank you Geoff.
We also had a special guest visitor today in the form of Marie Cahill, who is the Chair of the Friends of Angel Meadow, (a relatively newly formed Friends Group) who was looking for some advice from us about growing a successful volunteering group. Angel Meadow is located near Victoria Station in Manchester. It is a former slum area of Manchester referred to by Friedrich Engels (Karl Mark's friend) as "hell on earth". Thankfully it has improved significantly since then with much foreign investment going into the buildings in this area. However, unfortunately the Angel Meadow Park still has many of the litter, vandalism and poor maintenance issues which were our initial challenges. We were also delighted to see Patrick returning after a long absence. Everybody was made very welcome.
TODAY - NEW TOOLS
Thanks to a recent grant from Autotrader, we have been able to supplement our stock of tools this week. Picture 2 shows Allan and some of the early arrivals from the Co-op Bank and Green Energy collecting 5 new wheelbarrows loaded with a much need supply of additional tools.
Picture 3 shows Joyce and Gill B in the foreground labelling some hand trowels with FoDP markings and in the background Adrian is busy using a template to spray paint the Didsbury Park Volunteers name on the wheelbarrows. Thank you all. A timely project.
IT IS AUGUST (IT MUST BE SUMMER???) - SO LET'S GET ON WITH THE PAINTING.
Once again today we had a large team of 16 volunteers painting the railings around the children's playground. Everybody worked really hard and given that we used 12.5 litres of Hammerite paint we made significant progress around the railings.
We also continued our work of painting preservative on the kick fencing throughout the park. Picture 4 shows Bettina and Charlie who, having made a great job of painting the kick fencing around the triangular flower bed bed then moved on to the rather larger challenge of painting preservative on the kick fencing along the path leading to the Wilmslow Road entrance. Thank you Bettina and Charlie - this was a great piece of work.
Meanwhile next to the rockery - picture 5 shows Allan, Carl M and Julian making a huge improvement to the 'turtle bench'. They not only gave it a much needed coat of preservative but also used different shades of preservative to make the turtle carvings themselves stand out much more. An excellent result guys - thank you.
TIME TO INSTALL THE SPARE 'KING'S AWARD FOR VOLUNTARY SERVICE' PLAQUE
As part of our celebrations for our King's Award for Voluntary Service we managed to acquire a spare plaque. Today was the day we decided to install it in the volunteers shelter. Picture 6 shows Adrian assisted by Carl N posing for a photograph after it has just been installed. It looks just great - thank you guys.
TREE SUPPORT PROGRAMME
With some great work from Murray and Carl N today we finally completed the programme of checking and adjusting all the support structures and guards in place on all our young trees throughout the park. This has been a mammoth task and has enabled us to remove many guards as the trees have now reached a level of maturity and growth where they can now stand unprotected. The metal guards have clearly been a huge success with the young trees over the years and have enabled us to establish some very healthy new feature trees in the park. Well done and thank you to all the heavy gang involved in this activity over the last couple of months.
ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
Tristan and Patrick did some great work weeding the flower beds alongside the Bird Garden - great job guys
Robin and Laurent took on the challenge of removing the rampant mint spreading across the sensory garden - thank you both - this has made a big difference
Marie-Claude and John (see picture 7) and Kevin C did a super job tidying up the large flower bed opposite the rockery - thank you.
Sandra, and Wendy made a huge improvement by weeding the triangular flower bed and Gary then tidied up the area around the flower bed by mowing it. With additional support from Julie, Diane, Ilma and Lucy new bamboo supports were constructed round the large rose bushes and the large aruncus plants were removed entirely from the bed.
Julie, Diane, Ilma and Lucy also worked on improving the Flower Walk. Thank you.
Gary once again continued his dedicated attention to the new cricket pitch. It was given another expert mowing ready for its growing use by more and more children during the school holidays. Word is getting around - Well done Gary!
Gill B and Joyce started a campaign with the ailing rose bushes in the rose beds today and treated them all with 'Rose Clear' - let's hope it clears up our problems soon. Thank you both.
Especial thanks to Kevin today for raiding his own garden for spare ox-eye daises and adding them to the flowers in the wild flower meadow. Thank you Kevin - everything helps get rid of those pesky grasses.
A big thank you goes to Xin and his young family who undertook the job of adding more woodchip to the woodland trail today. A very worthwhile job for this very popular attraction in the park. Thank you
Once more I would like to thank Luke and Lorna who together did a thorough litter pick throughout the park. This was so effective and really smartened up the park. Thank you
Last but not least I would like to thank Sandra (in Gill's N's absence) and the cafe staff for managing a huge drinks order so efficiently this morning. Thank you all.
Finally, I was hijacked at the coffee break today by Charlie who said that because I take all the photographs every week I never appear in any of the updates - so picture 8 is the picture from Charlie - just to prove I do turn up!!!
Thank you once again for your continued amazing support.