Time to get started

Hurrah for the Community Council ! Hopefully most Church hill Gardeners will have got an e-mail saying that we have a grant for £750 from the Community Council to beautify our garden. I went to the community meeting at South Grove Primary School on Monday 26th February where the projects were voted upon.
Each resident was given 3 red stickers with their papers and asked to vote for the projects which were pinned up on the walls. Luckily I'm not a shy person, so when I realised that nobody knew us or knew about us, I just went up to anyone who looked friendly and said,
" Please vote for us, we're just a group of ordinary people in Church Hill Road....."
and basically I bored a few people into putting their stickers on our project. When they started adding up, I noticed that a man on my table hadn't bothered to vote at all, so I asked him to at least vote for us and the guy he was talking to agreed, so he did. It turned out the man's mate was the deputy leader of the council, so he probably did it to impress him rather than me.
Anyway, that one vote may have made all the difference, because we came third, and they had agreed to fund the first 3 projects.
So I've sent off the Bank details to Theresa at the council, and hopefully the money will soon be paid in.
Meanwhile...
Ita Keown, who works at St Mary's Community Garden in Hackney came over on Tuesday to measure up and suggest what we can do and how we can start. Ivan and Michael also came over and I wrote up her suggestions and posted them to everyone I have an e-mail address for.
I'll have a bash at getting them on the blog once I've spoken to Nathan about the best way of illustrating them.

A bit of excitement !

There's something in the garden and it's not just an empty Ribena carton ! The bulbs seem to be coming through, so there's a chance we might see a real difference in the near future.

Still waiting for the back wall to be painted, hopefully if the warm weather is approaching, that won't be long now.

Other good news is that I've been speaking with Theresa O'Brien about the Community Council's bids for funding, which need to be to her by 9th February. I think that will be possible, I'll get something together and e-mail it to everyone I have an address for to see what you think. Whatever happens we're going to do the garden, it would just be nice to make it really something. We really need to have something to stop people slinging stuff there, it's amazing they find it necessary with the bins next door, but there you go.

Any further ideas very welcome.

What a load of rubbish

A couple of minor disasters in the garden, the first was only to be expected. Unlike the very abstemious gardeners, some people found it necessary to sling their cans and cartons into the garden after there Christmas revels, even though there are a bank of bins right next door to the spot.

I need to get out with a pair of gloves to complete the clean up, but the worst is in the bins where it belongs.

I think this strengthens the case for a little bit of fencing or something to stop people doing this, it only need for the space to look uncared for again and we'll be back to square one. Hopefully Mick can guide us to the best solution.

Problem number 2 is the wall next to the garden, it was only mended in the summer, and it appears to be falling apart again. If you remember, the last time it was repaired, the workmen decided to use the garden as their site for mixing cement, so whatever happens, we don't want that again. On the other hand, broken walls are not only dangerous, but they also add to the general feeling of grottiness that we're trying to avoid.

I might just send this off to Ascham Homes in the hope they sort it out properly this time.

and more highlights

For those with more advance technical skills than me, you will doubtless notice that I 'm reduced to only adding a single photo with each post. If you saw the disaster when i tried multiple photos, you'd know why.
Anyway, good to see Paul and Angie, luckily with no worms in sight.

Lovely to see Mick and Margaret at the 'do', and even lovelier to see their very snazzy co-ordinating jumpers. Santa seems to have made an early stop at Number 34.

I'm ashamed to say that this is the only shot I got of Ivan, we were very sorry not to see Carol on the night, especially as she and Ivan have done such wonderful work in preparing the site.

Nicholas and Christopher both managed to join us, but had the sense not to get trapped on camera.

Highlights of the Christmas Gathering

A very Happy New Year to everyone from Joan, our President. It was lovely to see Joan and Joanna at the Christmas gathering, even though Joan was at pains to make it clear to everyone that she WON'T be doing any digging.

I don't know if this means that she's leaving it all to Joanna, we'll have to wait and see.

Anyway, she was in fine form and is expecting to enjoy the bulbs once they come up in the spring.

It's in the post.

Deadline for the Lottery Grants is 12.00 noon on Wednesday 13th December, so our application was in the post today to ensure it reached Newcastle on time, ( or should that read on Tyne ?)
Thanks to Tony for a brilliant job in putting together our aims and outcomes and all that technical stuff that had me scratching my head.
Thanks to Ivan for filling in his bit as our senior sponsor, and thanks to Michael for riding shotgun to the post office and doing the photocopying. There were more than 30 pages of questions, so it was rather a daunting task, but we got there in the end.
I'm sure there will be enormous competition for this, but at least we've tried. The results don't come out until May, so we've got quite a wait. Hopefully the garden will be looking lovely by then, so we'll enjoy it what ever the results.