Spring into Action: Upcoming Events and Volunteer Highlights at Didsbury Park
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY THIS WEEK:
On Wednesday 20th March - At Parrs Wood High School - 6pm to 8pm - You will be able to hear about Climate Action in Didsbury East - Deeds not Words organised by Cllr Linda Foley. We will have a stall at this event so do please come along and get involved - especially if you can help on our stall!
On Saturday 23rd March - We will be holding a BIG Spring Clean event in Didsbury Park between 10am and 1pm. This is a family fun day involving all the primary schools (and parents) and it is open to all members of the public as an opportunity to smarten up the park, after a long wet winter, ready for Easter. Please do come along with children & grandchildren if you can! Please see the posters for the event in pictures 1 & 2.
TODAY
Even though some of our regular volunteers were absent through illness or hospital appointments today we still had a very respectable turnout of 35 volunteers in the lovely sunshine this morning. Among our volunteers today were Mary from NatWest for the first time, and Vinod from Autotrader who has volunteered with us before. We also welcomed Aristhote once again, with his job coach Hema from Bridge College, Openshaw (see picture 3). It was also great to see Andrew and daughter Winnie once more actively helping us do a litter pick in the park. Winnie is fast becoming quite an expert on picking up twigs with her litter picker! Everybody was made very welcome
THE RETURN OF THE BELL!!
Thanks to some great repair work from Tom, our clapper was resecured to the bell and was back in action again today. This enabled Gill N once again, with a fully functioning bell, to be able to summon us from all corners of the park at coffee time. Thank you Tom.
ANNUAL PROGRAMME OF EVENTS FOR 2024 IN DIDSBURY PARK
Thanks also to Gill N and Grace for displaying the posters containing the planned programme of 2024 events and the details about this Saturday's BIG Spring Clean in the notice boards and lecterns around the park. For your information - the 2024 community programme of events is attached as picture 4. Thank you Gill and Grace - this was a great job!
HORTICULTURAL TEAMS
Now that the weather is warming up (relatively) we are approaching the time of year when it is like a race to catch the emerging weeds before they gain a hold on the flower beds. We had two large teams working on this task in the park today.
Picture 5 shows the large team of Wendy, Anne, Sandra, Joyce, Leslie, Tristan, and Mary who all worked really hard in the flower beds leading from the Wilmslow Road gate under Diane's (not in picture) careful supervision. This was an amazing piece of work which transformed this whole area. Thank you all.
Picture 6 shows the team of Ilma, Julie, Jude and Lis working equally hard on weeding the Flower Walk. This team was later joined by Lucy and they moved on to weed the flower bed opposite the rockery. This was a great piece of work - thank you all.
THE NEW BENCH PROJECT
Picture 7 shows the fabulous results of 4 weeks of hard work by the heavy gang. Today Murray, Adrian, Richard and Steve finished off and then unveiled the newly installed picnic bench anchored soundly in a newly constructed hard standing area. It is really great to see this bench back in operation again after the heavy gang had repaired it over the winter following the arson attack on it last year. It looks stunning in its new location. Thank you to everybody who has been involved in this long project. It has certainly been worthwhile.
COMPLETION OF SOAKAWAY WORK NEXT TO CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUND
Thanks to many weeks of work under Allan's supervision, the project to install soakaways near the children's playground was finally completed today by Roger with help from Gregg. Picture 8 shows Roger with one of the many wheelbarrows loaded with gravel which were needed to finish off the project. Thank you Roger and Greg and to everyone who helped improve the drainage in this area during the last few weeks. Hopefully there will be no more occurrences of the flooding which used to regularly occur in this area whenever it rained.
BIRD GARDEN - COMPLETION OF FIRST ANNUAL MOWING
A huge thanks must go to Carl M and Peter who joined forces today to give the Bird Garden its first complete mowing of the year. Picture 9 shows Peter and Carl, with the 2 lawnmowers, as they stopped work for a moment to pose for a picture. Thank you guys. This was an excellent result.
POPPY PATH
I am pleased to report that Robin, assisted by Vinod from Autotrader did some great work on the Poppy Path today preparing the flower beds ready for sowing with seed next week. Thanks also to Debs at MCC we had a green waste skip delivered to the Poppy Path today to enable us to recycle all the waste material we have produced during the recent work on the Poppy Path and a huge thanks to Robin who returned this afternoon to begin loading up the skip.
Thank you once again for your amazing support.