20101113 Planting day and WLA Cleaning
Big day for the Friends of Surrey Square Park (FoSSP) as a planting day, after some successful fund raising, could be organised.
Together with local Tenants & Residents associations few stalls were set-up and some bulbs prepared for planting, mainly, around the park playground.
It was even managed to have a "Bouncing Castle" to inveigle the younger residents.
The weather was not much to be talked about but considering the advance season it was good enough.
Even time to show how to prepare an apple feeder for the birds, to help getting through the wintering tough times ahead. However the "pièce de résistance " was the planting. People was gathered and without further ado all hands were busied into enhancing a stretch of future flowering elegance.
Of course some residents preferred a more relaxed approach to the task at hand but it was in the spirit of "at everyone his own pace".
After the event it was a good time to have a look at the Wildlife Area.
The wild-hedge coasting the kick-about area and maybe providing a future "green link" between the park main body and the WLA had been tended by Julian with great care and perseverance and one have to say that in spite of Council vandalising it started looking like an impressive addition to the arsenal of interesting aspects.
The wildlife area itself required some maintenance. The usual rubbish accumulation and some log rearranging but all in all had survived another
year. We were all rankled by the elder tree cutting, partly because of the pointless damage but also for the lack of consideration for our efforts
and in fact for the opinions or wish of the resident, for that matter, but went to work in good mood.
In less than no time we collected a fair bit of detritus and were rightly proud of it!!
Note:
The full pack of beer wasn't our. It was actually thrown in by some unknown (why is something of a mystery !?!)
As usual the little oasis of wilderness threw in some moment of delight to make sense of all the efforts people put in to defend it.
(Common Spindle Flower)
The poisonous but beautiful fruits of the spindle-tree (Euonymus europaeus). Poisonous that is for mammalians , birds and in particular black birds are over the moon for them.
Delicately winding its way out of grasses a Mycena mushroom (possibly Mychena epipterigia)
Some very vibrant autumn colours due to xantophilles and anthocyanins and lastly a torpid lesser stag beetle larva (Dorcus parallelipipedus) we found around some large log that have been disturbed.