Green Endeavours and Community Spirit: A Week of Progress at Didsbury Park

CORRECTION - VELVET SUN

In last week's update, I mentioned that Velvet Sun (Suborno's group) are playing this Friday evening at The Crown - Heaton Mersey, and I should have said The Crown - Heaton Moor at 9pm. Please see the official poster below advertising the event and containing all the details.

TODAY

We had another good turnout of 33 volunteers in the park this morning, and at coffee time, as suggested last week by a number of volunteers, we tried another experiment in an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint even further. With the agreement of the cafe, we switched back to a short trial of using reusable (i.e., washable) mugs at coffee time. This was masterminded by Gill N and the cafe team, and operationally, it went very smoothly. However, the reaction of the volunteers was mixed as it was found that unless the drinks were consumed asap, the outside air temperature very quickly cooled the hot drinks and in some cases were too cold to drink. We clearly have some more work to do on this idea if it is to be implemented in the long term.

THE JUNIOR LITTER PICKERS GO FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH

I am delighted to report that our regular junior litter-picking team doubled in size today when John and young William (see picture 2) joined our regular weekly litter pickers Andrew, young Winnie, and a dog named Brian! (see picture 3). Both teams came back with large amounts of litter in their bags. Thank you all - this was a fabulous piece of work!

HEAVY GANG BECOMES OLD COMPOST BAY DEMOLITION GANG

The heavy gang of Richard, Adrian, Murray, Carl N, and Rob took on the challenging job today of demolishing the rotting and vandalized old compost bays. It was a great piece of work and not only did the team clear the site but then, with the help of Geoff's loaned rotivator (thank you, Geoff), the guys levelled off the surrounding areas ready for planting. See picture 4 of Richard and Adrian rotivating and leveling the area and see picture 5 of Rob and Carl N removing any metalwork from the wooden framework. Murray, unfortunately, is not in any of these pictures as the one I took of him moving all the demolished material did not turn out - sorry, Murray. Thanks, everyone, this was an excellent piece of work. We are currently looking at the possibility of planting some new small/medium trees in this recovered area.

PRUNING OF OVERGROWN HEDGING AND PLANTS

Today we needed to do some more pruning work to prune back in some key areas of the park to ensure that the new CCTV cameras' line of sight was not obstructed. This project involved work at the Gillbrook Road gate, in the DNC garden, and along the hedge bordering the DNC building. The team of Dominique, Tristan, and Carl N did a great job and collected lots of green waste as a result.

MURPHY'S LAW

Murphy's Law states that "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time". We had an element of this today because normally every week, as regular as clockwork, we have a green waste skip delivered for us to use. Unfortunately, today it never turned up - just on the day we demolished the wooden compost bay and did a lot of hedge pruning. By 12 pm, we had a stack of 15 wheelbarrows overflowing with green waste and nowhere to put it. So at 12:30 pm, we made the decision to make a temporary pile of the waste behind the volunteers' shelter and then we surrounded it with barriers for safety. See picture 6.

HARD STANDING IMPROVEMENTS

Picture 7 shows Wendy, Sandra (wearing a hat that looks very familiar), and Gill B (just behind Sandra's right shoulder) pausing in the shelter during a brief shower of rain before doing some amazing weeding and tidying work on the hard standing underneath all 4 benches on the wildflower meadow. A huge thank you to Wendy, Sandra, and Gill. The benches look so much better after this work.

THE EUONYMUS PROBLEM

It has been obvious for the last few weeks that the euonymus plants which we had planted around Buddy and Lucy during Autumn were not looking as healthy as they should. So today, we took the opportunity, with a large team available, to carefully remove them and replant them in the flower bed at the roundabout. Picture 8 shows the team of Ilma, Julie D, Lorna, Bettina, Jude, and Lucy posing for a team photo at the roundabout. Thank you, everyone, this was a great job. Fingers crossed that they improve.

PATHS

Picture 9 shows Allan doing a fantastic job in tidying the edgings along the path beyond the roundabout. Further back from this section of the path, David and Brenda were doing an equally impressive piece of work tidying up the paths around the Gillbrook Road entrance, and not to be outdone, Sonia made a huge improvement to all the paths at the Sandhurst Road entrance to the park. Later in the morning, Tristan worked on the grass edgings near the wildflower meadow. Thank you all. This work makes a huge difference to how smart the park looks.

TREES

A lot of really good work continued today on tree maintenance on the main grassed area field in the park. Greg, Gary W, and Bettina weeded the bases and added new guards to at least 3 of the trees in this area. This was a great piece of support work for the trees - thank you all.

Picture 10 shows Alan maintaining the copse of rowan trees. Alan is in the process of relocating one of the younger saplings following the recent storm which blew down one of the larger rowan trees. Thank you, Alan, this looked...

SANDHURST ROAD GATE AREA

There was a lot of activity at the Sandhurst Road gate area in addition to the work which Sonia and Alan were doing today because we also took a large delivery of gravel for future planned projects of soakaways and new benches. Thank you to Gill N and Gary W, who helped prepare the area for the delivery by providing the safety barriers. Thank you.

FRIENDS OF DIDSBURY PARK MEMBERSHIP

Finally, I would like to say a huge thank you to all the members of the Friends of Didsbury Park who have already renewed their membership for 2024. As you know, this is our lifeline to enable us to buy tools and equipment to keep going throughout the year. We achieved a huge amount with your support in 2023, and we have now drafted our plans for 2024, which will be distributed to members in the pre-AGM papers to be sent out next month. If you have not already made your £10 subscription for 2024, could I ask you for your support for another year, please - it is really appreciated.

Thank you once again for your amazing support.