Monthly Archives: October 2015

Autumn, adventure… and fireworks!

October 26, 2015

Hi everyone,

Well the nights are drawing in and the trees are glorious explosions of colour and we’re loving autumn in the garden.  In the last week we welcomed little 10 day old Mabel along with her big sister Merryn to the toddler group as well as 99 year old Bert along to the Wednesday volunteer day.  So now NO ONE could possibly use age as an excuse not to get involved! (this is Merryn in the picture with a marrow that’s MUCH bigger than her sister)

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So aside from drinking tea and munching tasty sea buckthorn jam AND reading about ourselves in a juicy 5 page spread in Kitchen Garden magazine we’ve been busy enjoying the sunshine, braving the rain and still bringing in loads of tasty harvest AND saying a fond farewell to the fabulous volunteer Sue who’s been a steadfast member of the Wednesday crew and joy to have in the garden.  Enjoy Dorset Sue – we miss you already!
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Sooo coming up in the garden… we’re running adventure days tomorrow AND Thursday, we’ve got a new term of Golden Buds starting next week. The morning is full but there’s space in the afternoon 1:30-3 group and we’re offering FREE TASTER SESSIONS. Though most excitingly on the 7th of November is our Bonfire Night 6-7:30.  It coincides nicely with the fabulous fireworks put on by the amazing Bishop Rd School PTFA next door and is much less hectic for little folks who can’t manage a crowd.  They’ll be soup and cake for sale and a gurt big bonfire.   We don’t advertise this publicly or shout about it too loudly as that would be a bit cheeky but all our friends and their friends are invited into the garden to enjoy our warm welcome (and other people’s fireworks).  Bring a torch and cake donations very welcome!

fireworks and bonfire

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Hopefully see you in the garden!
 
Lucy

Good stuff and a trophy

October 12, 2015

Hi everyone

So!  The Harvest Fair! What. An. Amazing. Day!
Here are the stats*
People through the gate: 400
Total monies taken: £973!
Minutes of glorious sunshine: Only the whole flipping day!
Number of facepainters going like the clappers: 3 
Faces painted: 64
Magicians on site. 1 fabulous one
Number of cakes donated: LOADS and we sold out!
Number of pinecone/apple bird feeders made with the Growing for Gold Crew: 37
Veg monsters created: 33
Apples bobbed to comic effect: countless
Number of children falling in the pond. 0 (an all time low/personal best)
Number of people hurt: 0 (except me who got stung on the face by a wasp)
Number of musical acts rocking it on the solar powered Tower of Power stage: 6!
Number of punk badgers: 1.  Which is the right amount.
 
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All in all a lovely event made possible by our fabulous teams of volunteers at each station. Hats off to the folks doing the pizza, cake, pond, crowns, soup, bobbing, painting, gating and the rest!  We always need more people helping at our lovely events and helping to put on them on. So if you’d fancy joining the fab folks on ourevents committee then let me know.  It’s a few chatty meetings to spread out all the jobs so it’s all pretty painless and definitely mostly fun.

And then we only went and won a massive cup! The RHS Britain in Britain in Bloom folks gave us The Gordon Ford Trophy for being the best entry in the It’s Your Neighbour catergory in the South West.  Out of 600 entries! Whoop!
trophy compressedThe Golden Buds sessions are a joy and we’d love to have some more volunteers so if you’d like to come help out on Tuesday mornings with digging, dipping, singing and crafting then let me know AND we’ve still space in our afternoon group and are offering free taster sessions.  
 
AND …remember our cosy Bale House is available to hire from £10 an hour and I’m about to start taking bookings for the Golden Adventure days running in the half term Tuesday AND Thursday! More info on them here   but let me know if you’re interested to get first dibs on those places.
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Happy autumn and see you in the garden!

Lucy