STORM BOELO IMPACTS DIDSBURY PARK - ON SATURDAY
With wind and heavy rain forecast to arrive during our scheduled BIG LEAF CLEAR UP event on Saturday morning it was amazing just how many young families actually braved the weather and turned up in the park to help.
Admittedly it was not the large numbers of attendees we had experienced in recent years (when both the leaves, the volunteers and the weather have been dry throughout) but nevertheless we had a continuous steady flow of young families throughout the whole morning. Thank you to everyone who turned up and especially to Sonia and Allan who provided much of the project management on the day.
Picture 1 shows young Alexander and Sebastian, two of our most reliable volunteers who, with Mum Mandy, arrived before the rain and did a great leaf clearance of the small copse of trees near the volunteers shelter. Thank you all. Picture 2 also shows regular helpers Eunice and David who focussed on our priority project of clearing as many slippy wet leaves from the paths around the park as possible. A huge thank you to everybody who took part.
STORM BOELO IMPACTS DIDSBURY PARK - ON SUNDAY
Thanks to the great spirit of support we have in our community, when I woke on Sunday morning there were messages waiting for me containing photos of overnight tree damage in the park. The most dramatic picture was sent by Alison, and showed the large fallen tree blocking the path from the park to the Poppy Path (and also featured her dog Eddie!).
Alison's dramatic photo is above as Picture 3. Thank you Alison. So with help from Allan, Denise and Geoff we set about dismantling the fallen tree and unblocking the path, before tidying up, and making all the other damage in the park safe again. Picture 4 shows Allan and Denise relaxing, having cut up and stored the tree pieces off the path ready to be collected on Monday.
STORM BOELO IMPACTS DIDSBURY PARK - TODAY
For the third day running we experienced grey skies and heavy rain in the park this morning. Without exception, everybody who took part got thoroughly wet BUT amazingly we still had a huge turnout of 36 volunteers AND despite the weather we did get a lot done too!
A big thank you to Jo at the cafe who allowed us to dry off a bit and have some shelter inside the cafe at our break time. We were once again, joined today by 12 volunteers from the NatWest bank. We also welcomed Julie, back after her month in New Zealand, Greg after many months of grandchildren duty and Winnie returned to her regular weekly litter pick, (as her nursery class is on half term holiday).
Picture 5 shows early starters, Winnie with dad Andrew, as they got in some early litter picking before the rain became heavy. We also welcomed Roger Morris, from MCC, to undertake some power tool training but given the weather conditions, we had to abandon our outside training and do some inside tool maintenance instead. Thank you Roger. The delayed training is now scheduled for Monday 9th November. Everybody was made very welcome.
Due to technical problems with my camera today I must apologise for the fewer than normal number of pictures accompanying this update report.
TODAY - TREE MAINTENANCE
It was great to see that our team of experts Taylan, Harry, Harender, and Chris all turned up today and continued their programme of tidying up, and applying woodchip mulch to the trees right across the whole park. Today they focussed on the copse of young rowan trees, the nearby magnolia and our special tree, planted to commemorate the Kings Award for Voluntary Service. Well done guys this was a great piece of work - thank you!
TODAY - HORTICULTURAL ACTIVITIES
It is fair to say that the weather prevented us from doing much work in the flower beds today. Earlier this week we had purchased, from our funds, a stock of lavender plants for the new flower bed. Whilst our plans to plant them today had to be postponed, we were grateful to Denise (L) who took the opportunity to do more weeding and preparation of the new flower bed ready for planting next week. Thank you Denise.
TODAY - CLEARING UP THE PARK AFTER THE STORM
We had a lot of people, working on clearing the paths of leaves and tree debris today. The large team from Natwest, concentrated on collecting the tree branches from near the Poppy Path and then on the paths near the roundabout and along the path behind the cafe. Allan did a great job on Saturday with the leaf blower to clear the path next to the woodland area and we were delighted to see that it still remained clean and safe today.
A team consisting of Christine, Denise (O) and Harender did a great job clearing the paths at the Sandhurst Road pedestrian entrance. This path area is always dangerous in Autumn as the leaves on the path are particularly slippy. Thanks to today's team, this area is much safer. Thank you everyone.
TODAY - CRICKET PITCH MAINTENANCE
Gary, once again ran his expert eye over the re-seeding of the cricket pitch today and determined that it needed some further rolling and tlc before we need to completely finish the maintenance for the winter. Great work Gary. Thank you.
TODAY - WOODLAND CARE AND ATTENTION AND HEDGEHOG HABITAT
It was great to see Greg rejoining the volunteer team with such ideal timing today. As the teams, clearing up the park, deposited tree branches of varying sizes in the skip, so Greg was selectively taking them out again and assisted by Richard, Harley and Sandra, was cutting them to size and taking them to the woodland area where they were being used to create natural fencing and habitats for wildlife - particularly hedgehogs. Fingers crossed that we are successful in attracting some interesting new inhabitants. Thank you all.
TODAY - WOODCHIP PROJECTS
With the recent heavy rain many of our woodchip paths are starting to deteriorate and so today we took the opportunity, so to speak, to 'kill two birds with one stone'. Earlier this week we had had a delivery of woodchip which covered our hard standing parking area and so firstly Patrick on his own and then the NatWest team cleared the hard standing woodchip and used a lot of it to top up the path to the bench near the cafe. The path was dramatically improved as a result. Thank you all.
TODAY - ELSEWHERE IN THE PARK
An especial thank you to Richard for overseeing the condition of the goalpost nets and for doing running repairs when required.
Thank you once again everyone for your amazing support especially during this last week's difficult weather.