What a fabulous day for today's NEWT events and what a super turnout. Margaret, Jackie and Tracy came along but also new volunteers: Mark, Cohen and Sammy.
The morning involved raking cut grass from the old pitch and put circles and then carting it to a place where it can rot, under nearby trees. Every one got involved with this and it was a good work out!
Then we all lined up with some yellow rattle seed in our hands and began sprinkling. This seed would make the area a great place to plant wild flowers as this plant keeps the long grasses at bay. Chris then made us do a silly stampy dance to bed the seeds into the ground. What did we look like?
Meanwhile Margaret and Jackie were working on the second task which was taking down some crack willow around a pond on the park. The aim of this was to let more light in so that plants and animals can flourish there. They organised the branches into neat piles which was very useful for later, when we made the dead-hedges.
Sue came along with some muffins for a well deserved snack (Thank you, Sue!) and this got Simon into silly mode. There's always room for silliness. Both Sammy and Cohen also got to wear a GoPro camera, to record their activities - great fun!
Then Simon brought out the new drone to have a play with. It has a little camera on it and so it will be interesting to see what it recorded from on high....
Then we all set to to chop up the willow and construct the dead hedges. We made great head-way and there was a real sense of accomplishment at the end. Rod (Sammy's dad) even got roped in at the end.
Thank you so much to all of our volunteers. It was a fun, varied and really enjoyable day! Here's our video to round it up: