TODAY

Following the last minute cancellation of a large team of 20+ volunteers from business who were due to volunteer with us this morning, the call went out during the week for as many of our volunteers as possible to  come along this morning. This was to prepare the park, as best we could, for the scheduled visit of the RHS judge tomorrow. This inspection will be part of the evaluation for our annual entry into the Northwest in Bloom Competition. 

I am delighted to say that the response was magnificent and we ended up with 40 volunteers working hard in the sunshine in the park this morning. This included two new volunteers Mariam and Rana who travelled from Sale and Trafford respectively to join us for the first time. It was also especially great to see new Monday morning park appearances from Louise and Denise. Everybody was made very welcome.  

Our main focus today was in two areas. Firstly we wanted to weed some key flower beds along the inspection route and secondly we wanted to make sure that the paths themselves were cleaned and edged as best we could. 

THE NEW KAVS PLAQUE

Firstly though today the honour of installing our new KAVS plaque was given to Adrian and Rob. Not surprisingly we chose to install it on the volunteer's shelter which is our natural HQ in the park.

Picture 1 shows Rob and Adrian admiring the plaque after it had been installed in its new home. Thank you Rob and Adrian.

WORKING IN THE FLOWER BEDS

We had a very large team of volunteers working on some key flower beds today.

Picture 2 shows Diane, Tristan, Christine, Ilma and Jane, all busy weeding a section of the Flower Walk. Picture 3, taken further along the Flower Walk shows  Denise, Wendy and Jude in action with Ian weeding around the bench in the background. Picture 4 shows Julie D joining Wendy and Jude in the same area. Meanwhile just around the corner picture 5 shows Allan doing an amazing weeding job at the base of the rockery. Further along from the rockery picture 6 shows Anne working on some challenging bindweed. Sonia had earlier weeded the rose beds and the flower bed around the roundabout and Lesley helped by edging around the rose beds too. Working just as hard, but unfortunately not included in any of the pictures, were Robin, Lucy, Myra, Alan and Louise.   Thank you one and all - this was an amazing effort today. The results are fantastic. 

CLEANING THE PATHS

Picture 7 shows Carl M, Joyce and Greg in the background making a huge improvement on tidying the edging along the path alongside the bowling green.

Greg later took up the strimmer to speed up this work and Gill B, Mariam and Rana assisted by sweeping up all the green waste. Thank you all. This was a huge improvement along this path. 

 TIDYING UP AROUND THE BENCHES

Picture 8 shows Peter working on clearing all the grass and weeds from out of the hard-standing around one of the benches in the park. Ian and Kevin were also doing similar jobs on the benches in other parts of the park.

This was a challenging piece of work but it made a major improvement to the smartness of the benches and their surrounding area as a result. Thank you Peter, Ian and Kevin. Great work.

THE CHAIN FENCING

Picture 9 shows Richard and Carl N doing some maintenance work, in the sunshine, on one of the couplings of the chain fence near the cafe.

Fingers crossed, this temporary fencing does seem to be making a big difference in saving the grassed area behind it. Thank you Richard and Carl.

TOM TO THE RESCUE

Picture 10 shows Tom doing some basic maintenance checks on the electric mower before taking it back to his workshop where he discovered a broken micro switch which was preventing the cutter from working.

This was a superb piece of investigative work Tom. A replacement part is now being ordered and we hope to have the mower back in operation soon. Thank you Tom.  

GILL TO THE RESCUE 

Thanks are due once again to Gill N for multitasking the filling of the doggy bag dispenser bins, the collection of the cake for our break time and the faultless management of our beverages at the break. Thank you Gill. 

KAVS GARDEN PARTY PHOTOGRAPHS:

We are also hoping to receive the photographs from the KAVS Garden Party this week! Watch this space!

Thank you once again for your amazing support.