Our Gardening Club.

Following the renovation work on Sarehole Mill that started in March 2011 and the creation of new gardens, volunteers on an ad hoc basis also tackled nettles, wrestled brambles, and untangled ivy to clear space for wildlife planting.  This continues, as do the brambles and nettles.  Perseverance is the order of the day.

This summer a regular gardening club started. Volunteers mainten the existing gardens and we are establishing new ones around Sarehole Mill.   Gardening tools have been purchased for our use.  We meet twice a month until the end of October and intend creating a garden oasis of appropriate woodland plants and wild flowers alongside the mill pool and around the mill itself.  Details of the club are on the website www.shirecountryparkfriends.org.uk. 

We are lucky in having The Shire Country Park on our doorstep in Hall Green.  Actually our doorstep is within The Shire Country Park, running as it does from the Solihull boundary in the South, along the River Cole Valley to the Ackers Trust in the North.  Along this natural ribbon of wildlife, enthusiastic volunteers take part in conservation work days enhancing and preserving the various sections of river margins.  Sarehole Mill Gardening Club is one of the groups under the umbrella of Sarehole Environmental Action Team that serves the River from the Mill along to the Stratford Rd via Greet Mill Meadows.   Each section of river has its own group, and they are shown on the above website if you are interested in joining them or just browsing the activities.

Of course Sarehole Mill café is very conveniently placed along the River Cole for those who enjoy the less strenuous but no less important activity of taking refreshments within attractive surroundings.  

We have had several workdays since the Gardening Club started, the first one with  just two volunteers who became totally drenched.  I was well covered but with my hood over my head, I could not see what I was doing so I decided it was easier to just get wet.  (Again)!  Since then, workdays have been, remarkably for this summer, sunny and much enjoyed by the 8/10 volunteers who regularly attend. 

During one session we learned that judges for the Britain in Bloom Competition were visiting the mill and its surrounds.   In what I can only think was a mad rush of blood to my head, I offered to drive out (somewhere) to fetch lots of ivies of various strains to plant at the mill.  I am not a bad driver.  I just don’t enjoy it very much.  As far as I am concerned, it is useful and I try not to travel too far outside Hall Green.   Some people might even describe me as a Sunday driver.  I am not!  I drive like that every day of the week.  I am though, a very good passenger and my map reading skills are nearly always perfect.

However, now I have a sat nav and it is great.  It was a wet day to start with and then became wetter and finally the rain became a deluge.  Drivers passed me in wild clouds of spray but undaunted I concentrated on the gentle voice explaining where I should go next. The infrequent pinging, called to mind plane journeys.  I expected small packets of pretzels to materialise.  Then magic, I was there and the rain stopped.  Fibrex Nursery houses the national collection of ivies.  I had not been aware there were so many different kinds being used to tackling the common ivy that grows up trees and down dales.

Back at t’mill, we planted 70 odd ivies, cleared up dead leaves and rubbish, planted more ferns, weeded, swept up and had coffee.  Lovely!

Apparently the judges were impressed!     More anon! 

Towards 'That Time of Year'.

In my research on spiders, it being that time of year when male spiders are on the lookout for females and, in what has turned out to be a vain effort to achieve tolerating them through familiarity (which has singularly failed), I have been looking at information on Cellar Spiders.  You know those spindly creatures with tiny bodies and long legs.   They often hang there quivering with excitement at the thought of their next meal.   I find I can just about accept them so it seemed a good place to start.

Apparently a million people in the UK are arachnophobes.  Which means I am one in a million, which is nice!  Apparently ‘it’s the way they look.’  Well yes, that could be it.  8 thin legs and unpredictable behaviour is off-putting on anything as far as I am concerned.  Strangely enough, I find them inoffensive in the garden.  They can skip merrily across my hands (admittedly in gardening gloves these days) (the hands not the spiders), tear across my feet and even, should they dare, start climbing up my trouser legs.  Not for long mind you.  I do, however, brush them off carefully rather than jumping up and down taking wild sweeps in the air.  Perhaps it is because I can accept them in the garden, which I consider to be their natural habitat, which we happen to be sharing.  However, in the house (even though they consider it to be their natural habitat) we are on opposite sides of the web so to speak.

Now I have been informed that spiders do not wish to hurt you and are just seeking the shade.  This is logical.  I can believe this.  However, logic goes out of the window when a shade seeking missile, obviously one that has been practising for gold, aims straight for you and ignores completely all the other shady places en route.

There are about 600 different species of spider in the UK, and 8 of them are house spiders. In the garden you more easily come across a wide variety of spiders of different sizes and colours.  This worries me not.    In fact the range is quite interesting.  It is possible to crouch there watching them and even wondering where they might be off to.  Of course, even there, it is better if they wandering away rather than towards.

In the house it is a different matter.  I have become better over the years at tackling them.  The ones I carefully remove wrapped in a cloth are bigger than they used to be.  I draw the line at those monstrous things that thunder over the carpet towards you.  I remember well the time I was sitting on the floor watching television when ‘the beast’ emerged and headed straight for me.  The spider shot up the fire surround, missing me, as I was jumping onto the sofa.  It was touch and go who reached the highest point.  I hang there momentarily quivering.  Which brings me, rather cleverly, back to cellar spiders.  It appears that these spiders enjoy being in cellars, obviously, but also any undisturbed place. 

This troubles me and indicates I am spending too much time in the garden and not enough with the fluffy duster.