Once again, I would like to say a huge thank you to Sonia, supported by Allan, for managing the Monday morning volunteer sessions in my absence and to Kevin for expertly drafting the following update report below. As I sit here by the swimming pool on a sunny morning, with temperatures forecast to reach 34 degrees later today, it is hard to imagine that next Monday morning it will be back to the vests, jumpers and waterproofs - I can't wait to see everybody again!

I do, however, have some sad news about one of our Friends of Didsbury Park members. Christine (Chris) Miller, who has lived on Gillbrook Road next to Didsbury Park all her life and had some great tales about the park from her childhood, has died suddenly. Please remember her in your thoughts and prayers.

With best wishes

Brian

This week

After a couple of weeks of great weather on Monday mornings for the Park volunteers, everything changed on a cold and very wet morning. At times, the amount of rain was biblical. Nevertheless, we had a remarkable turnout of 30 volunteers who braved the weather.

This was our last morning without Brian, who will be flying back from Australia later this week, where he has been enjoying 30-degree heat. As usual, Allan and Sonia came to the park early to set up the equipment. We also took delivery of 2,500 winter bedding plants, which were quickly unloaded and put into safe storage.

We spent the rest of the morning doing the following:

Planting bedding

Several teams spent time planting the first batches of the winter bedding plants in the main beds throughout the park. We followed a natural planting scheme and think that these are going to look great as they start to flower over the next few weeks.

New Flower Walk Bed

It was great to start planting in the new bed in the flower walk. This is the area in front of the newly repaired old wall. The first plants to go in were lavenders, roses and rose campions. Again, this team used a natural planting scheme to start several drifts of plants around the bench.

Drains and Rain

The heavy rain highlighted several blocked drains, and these were cleared to reduce the many large puddles that had started to form.

Other work

Groups continued to work on the Poppy Path and generally cleared beds of weeds and summer bedding to allow bulb and winter bedding planting next week. We also started to tidy up the planters at the front of the café.

We also managed to have our normal morning break, and we would like to thank the café staff for letting us take this inside.

As usual, thanks for all the support with the park, and Brian will be back next week!