Here is the next quarter of our year visiting the Hillier gardens.  Having bought a subscription in October, we are visiting every month.  It is proving to be a wonderful journey through the seasons.

January

One of the great things about Hilliers is that just walking from the car makes you reach for your camera….I don’t know what these yellow flowers were but they were like drops of sunshine on a grey day.

I do love Hellebores and I do prefer the nodding ones even if I have to stoop to investigate the flowers more closely!

As mentioned in my previous post, Hilliers is renowned for its winter garden and  there is plenty of colour there throughout the winter month. However,  the Pinetum is one of my favourite places to go in the winter.  There is a range of greens and textures in conifers that is very satisfying.  Sadly, not so visible in the picture.

There are also these sculptures dotted around the garden but mainly in the Pinetum.  These represent pinecones and seed heads and blend so well with their surroundings.

February

This was the sight that greeted us on the approach to the entrance to the gardens…

Purple and white crocuses in great drifts.

I was expecting snowdrops, and I got snowdrops……….

I have a great fondness for snowdrops and am sad they will not grow in my own garden no matter what.

I have mentioned before that I love trees in winter, and this applies to other plants too.  Just look at these examples of colour without  flowers.

Walking down to the large pond, we stopped to have a look at the fish.  There are normally loads of them visible in the murky depths.  Not a single one…..puzzling. Then I saw this up in a tree nearby….

It may not be obvious from my not-so-great photo, but it’s a heron perched on a tree overhanging the pond (what do they do with their legs?!).  Certainly explained why the fish were nowhere to be seen.

And then onto one of  my favourite plants in the garden, the paperbush tree, Edgeworthia crysantha.

I think of this as the Star Trek tree as I think it would have looked very much at home with the paper boulders etc..

March

More and more flowers appearing already in the gardens as we move towards spring.

Lots of blues and yellows.

 

 

Some yellows were very familiar.

Others more unusual

Rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias are all coming into flower.  The magnolia avenue is just showing a promise of what it will be like in a week or two.

Especially interesting was the Magnolia campbelli which is a species which may not start flowering until it is 30 years old but when it does, the flowers are enormous.

(got J’s hand for scale)

As spectacular and flashy as all the above are I find as much pleasure in these primulas, flowering their hearts out with the deep red of the peonies just coming through.

 

Just before I leave you, here is the Edgeworthia crysantha again, its flowers are just going over now.

Apparently the fibres from the bark fibres are used for making the handmade Japanese tissue called “mitsumata paper”.  Mitsumata is used for banknotes as the paper is very durable.  Amazing stuff.

Can’t believe it’s already been half a year at Hilliers.  Hope you enjoyed the visits!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before we even got to our second litter pick, I had some heartening news – we are not alone!  There is another litter picking group that goes on once a month around the area of Shirley (St James Park etc.) and has been for some time.

I learnt of this as I was trying to think of other ways to inform people of our group and came across some pages for our local area.  One of them informed me of this other group, I got in contact with the leader and had a really great chat on the phone with her.  She was encouraging and generous with advice and suggestions.  As her group meets on the second Saturday of the month, I decided to change our group’s meet to the first Saturday of the month so that if people want to do both they can.  She has a poster printed with all the dates of the meet on it, so I decided to do the same.

I noted that her group meets at the same place each month and picks for a half an hour longer.  I decided this was a good plan – it means you have time to walk a fair way away and still have an hour to pick there but everyone knows where to meet each month, worth a try.  She also suggested that we print a credit card sized handout with just contact details on it for people who ask  pickers for more info.  You can carry this in your wallet and hand it out immediately to interested parties -another great idea.

Sally’s group meets at Shirley Parish Hall (Colebrook Avenue) on the second Saturday of the month at 10am.

Back to our litter pick.  Eight wonderful people arrived at the meet point to pick so that was ten in all.  We had several teams covering different areas and this time there was a huge amount of general waste and recycling and not as much glass.  We were grateful for this as glass get heavy very quickly.

This is what some of the areas looked like before we started………

 

 

 

Litter picking is surpringly satisfying, it’s that feeling of cleaning up, and you can immediately see the results of your work.

Before we knew it we were out of time and needed to get all the bags back to the car.  We also needed to go some way to find our helpers as it is very easy to just keep walking and go where the litter takes you!

Meeting back at the house with all our bags was really gratifying.

 

Best find?

A set of plastic duck decoys…………..

………………..wonder what the story behind that is?

Second best find was a pair of trousers – ditto!

Here are pictures of our haul….

This means that each of us picked a bag of general waste each …….

And there’s more.  Here is what we couldn’t/wouldn’t pick up but SCC will……….

 

So there you have it.  A good morning of litter picking.

Now, if we could only stop people dropping it……………….

 

 

 

As a result of my visit to Southampton Voluntary Services, I contacted Southampton City Council’s Cultural Services to ask about volunteering with them, and I thought the process might be of interest.

I heard fairly quickly from the volunteer co-ordinator sending me a registration form to complete.

The form was not long; it was well laid out,  listing opportunities of interest and asking for your availability.  There is space to write about your experience, qualifications and why you are interested in volunteering with Southampton Cultural Services.  It also asked for two referees, and there was a section on health issues and information about DBS checks.

I completed the form, scanned it and sent it back.  I was contacted again by email to arrange a time to go and meet the volunteer co-ordinator, and this meeting was at Tudor House museum.

Sitting in the cafe at the museum, we chatted more about the sort of volunteering I was interested in.  I was concerned that they might only want regular volunteers, but there are plenty of ‘event’ opportunities which come up and this fitted into what I was interested in for GoT.  Once you are registered, you receive a newsletter informing you of various events that are coming up, you decide which one(s) you are interested in and sign up.   I was delighted as I really want to try and do as many different things as possible during this year.

The volunteer co-ordinator gave me a handbook with all the information I would need, together with contact phone numbers, opportunities for training, what is expected from volunteers, what the dress code is – all in all everything you might need to know.

When I got home, I had the link sent to me for an online DBS check.  I am just waiting now to take my ID documents to show to the co-ordinator and that will be complete.

I was also sent the link to the events information.  I immediately signed up to help on the DaVinci day at Southampton Art Gallery in May.  If you are local and haven’t seen this marvellous exhibition of DaVinci’s drawings I absolutely recommend it.

So interesting to know about this side of the Cultural Services.  Volunteers obviously play a large part in helping  in all kinds of museums and events in the city.  The events in particular give employed people the chance to volunteer as well as some of these happen at weekends.

 

 

 

 

 

Just a quick post this week.  I thought it might be useful/interesting to talk about how I have been finding volunteering opportunities.

My first few blog posts came about from friends who had ideas themselves or knew of things/events that were going on.  This either put me in direct contact with an event, or got me thinking about other things that might need doing.  Going along to the Nursling and Rownhams litter pick was an example.  Having joined a litter picking group that was already set up, I then started to think about looking for a local event and from there, to setting up my own event locally.

Southampton Voluntary Services, is a central point for many volunteering opportunities.  I knew about the service but not in any great detail, so I looked on their website. I was pleased to see that the website is clear, informative and easy to navigate althought specific volunteering opportunites are not listed there, they ask you to sign up for a newsletter to receive those.  You can also sign up to volunteer online.

They have a casual drop in at the centre on a Thursday and a late night drop-in centre at the Central Library from time to time.  Details of the next one are on the website.  If neither is an option you can contact them by phone or email.

I decided to go along to the Thursday drop in at the centre.  I had in mind that this might be people just dropping in, having a look at leaflets, chatting a bit and then going away to look on the website.  In actual fact, it was more organised and helpful.

I arrived at reception and was given a short form to complete, I then went into a room to chat with the co-ordinator.  We talked briefly about what I was interested in and my skills and then she went through the opportunities with me, showing me the newsletter and highlighted certain things she thought I would be interested in.  She gave me email addresses to contact and told me to give it two weeks or so for the various organisations to get back to me, but if I didn’t hear, then I was to contact her to let her know. I imagine that is on of the ways they keep their list up to date as she would contact them to make sure they are still looking for volunteers.

I contacted two organisations as a result of my visit to SVS and also signed up for their newsletter.  Great resource.

 

 

 

The day dawned on our first litter pick in our local area.  The weather was good, I had loads of offers of help and we handed out all our grabbers and hi-vis jackets and cleared massive amount of litter from the streets.

Then I woke up….

Sadly, I think the awful storm we the day before had put many people off and as the day dawned I had had no offers of help from the flyers we and the church had distributed.  In addition to this, both myself and my husband John had been ill and John, who was a few days behind me with the cold, was just not well enough to join me.

Luckily, my dear friend Jane (of metasequoia fame, see Hilliers post), had agreed to join us and completely saved the day as I would have felt very lonely without her!

Undaunted, I loaded the car up, and drove to the meeting place, a local park.  We arrived, and as expected, there was no one else there, so we just got on with it.

As you can see, the council had supplied us well with grabbers, hi-vis jackets, heavy duty bags and bag rings.  I knew the rings would help to keep the bags open but had not actually seen one so I was interested to see how they looked and worked.

It is not easy to see from the photo, but the rings consist of two parts which separate.  You fold the top of the bag over one part and then push the green ring back on.  It snaps in and holds the bag open.  This makes things so much easier.  They also have a bit of weight to them which was helpful as things were still pretty windy.

The council could only give me one set of bags.  I wanted to separate out the recycling, glass and general waste, so I simply made out labels that could be stuck on.

We left the car and looked up the road. This is how it looked when we arrived….

…and when we left….

…and that was just two of us working for an hour.

Of course that didn’t take up the whole hour, and we quite quickly moved up to the area you can see in the picture where the two trees are.

Here is a bit of it after we had picked.

As we moved up following the metal barrier, we found an unloved piece of ground that was clearly being just used as a dumping ground.

We spent the rest of our hour there.  Much of the rubbish was glass bottles so we were very careful to keep an eye out for broken glass and we ALWAYS used our grabbers.

There were some things that we simply could not move…..

….so I will be contacting the council and they will collect them.

Here is the result of our hour – two bags each of glass, recycling and general waste.  Later on that day, I took them all to the local waste and recycling area. Those of you who know about the Millbrook roundabout situation will appreciate that this was a longer journey that normal!

It was such a satisfying thing to do and it really has made me realise what a difference can be made.  Regardless of how many people join me next time, I will be litter picking on the second Saturday of the month for the forseeable future.

If somewhere looks unloved it will be treated as such.  It won’t be respected, and it will get worse, we need to break the cycle and I truly believe  litter picking can contribute towards doing just that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a quick post this week to bring you up to date on the litter picking group we are setting up.

The next time I emailed Southampton City Council, I asked for any guidelines they had for litter picking groups.  Using a combination of their guidelines and  online searches, I put together a flyer/poster to circulate.

Here it is:-

Each time I will add when and where to the poster, but I wanted  to get SCC’s approval on it generally.  From their reply, they seem very pleased with it, and so I was happy to go ahead.

Next question was where and how to recruit helpers.  I decided not to just send out a general request to one and all and there were a couple of reasons for this.

First of all, SCC can lend us equipment, but they need to have a couple of weeks notice to organise this, so we need to know how many people we will have.  As the poster says – you cannot litter pick without grabbers (everyone must supply their own gloves).

Secondly,  we wanted this to be a positive event, and it seemed sensible to have some control over who would come, so I thought I would ask the local anglican church, Christchurch Freemantle. As it happens, John and I have connections with this church – we have a dear friend who is a retired vicar and goes to the church, we carol sing in pubs with them at Christmas and some of John’s family are members.

After contacting them, they were extremely positive and encouraging.  They used to organise their own litter picking group, but the person who organised it left, and no one had taken it over.   They will read it out in church notices, put it on their Facebook page and encourage people to come, they will also give us a rough idea of numbers.

So – that’s it.  SCC will deliver 10 grabbers and hi -vis jackets to our house together with bags, and our first litter pick takes place on 9th February.

Wish us luck.

As a musician/singer, I am always practising, even pieces I have played/sung many times before.  Learning an instrument is only the beginning of what it means to be a musician, amateur or professional.

I think some of my non-musical friends are surprised to hear how long it can take to work on a really challenging song – it isn’t just a question of learning the notes; technique, muscle memory and breathing all have to be worked on, and that is before you get together with an accompanist to rehearse.

I have been reminded of this fact whilst preparing for a 30 min afternoon entertainment at a local care home with my friend Julia.  We were not choosing very challenging pieces to play or sing but the preparation for this, as far as rehearsing the items goes, did not differ from the preparation for a more formal concert.

Preparing the programme –  1 hour

Choosing a programme is a crucial part of the planning. It is important to stick to the time allowed, especially for an event like this where the 30 minute slot is chosen by the staff at the care home as a good period of time for the residents.  Generally, you can allow 3 mins per piece so we knew we needed around 10 pieces.

Rehearsing – 2.5 hours

We had decided to do a variety of items, some playing, some singing and some reading.  Duets, of course need to be practised, and we were doing both piano and recorder duets.  I haven’t included the time we spent practising separately, just the time we spent together, rehearsing and preparing.  I also sang some solos with Julia accompanying me on the piano, so these had to be worked on as well.  All very enjoyable, we love working together,  but keeping track of the time for GoT really made me appreciate the work involved.

We arrived at around 2.10pm for a 2.30 start and were greeted at the door by Sharon, the lady responsible for organising the activities at the home.

We set up in an upstairs room which had a piano.  As we were getting everything unpacked and ready, we realised that, although there was a piano stool, we needed another chair for the duets and this needed to be –  a chair without arms.

This is always tricky at care homes as they simply do not have the need for them and have to go hunting.  The staff are always so accommodating and it wasn’t long before they found not one, but two – very useful for stacking in order to bring you up to piano stool level.

Although our audience varied greatly in the attention they were able to give us, it is always gratifying to see people beginning to engage as they hear the music. Our opening number ‘This little light of mine’ had several of them mouthing the words or tapping hands or feet.

The recorder duets went down well as did the vocal solos and the readings Julia had chosen – The Owl and the Pussycat and the Kings Breakfast  were really well received, not least because she is so good at doing the characters – not my forte at all.

By the time we got to the final item, How great thou art, the residents were more than ready to sing all four verses with us and it was a rewarding ending to our half hour.

I thought you may be interested to know what the tally is so far for GoT, so have included a ‘Number of hours’ page on the site.

 

 

 

Following my very first blog post when John and I did a one hour litter pick in Nursling and Rownhams, I was keen to join a similar group in my local area.

John and I try to do a 10 min walk after every meal.  As it is only 10 minutes, we walk the streets near us, and noted that there is an area by the dual carriageway that could really do with a clean up, so I began searching online for a local group to join.

Looking online brought up a number of clean up campaigns, Keep Britain Tidy, and Litter Action to name but two, but couldn’t find any planned litter picking events near us. It appears that there aren’t any in our local area.

Next step was to go on the local council website. They do mention community clean ups and suggest you email them to find a group near you.  I received a speedy reply to my email saying that there were no groups in my area, but if I wanted to go ahead and do a litter pick, they could provide the equipment.

Setting up our own group?  Well that would be interesting and certainly would add some hours into the GoT tally.

Sounds simple? Well it is, but then you get to thinking…..

• Shall we just do a one-off litter picking event, or set up a regular one?
• If we do a regular one, how often and when?
• Health and safety? (you knew that one was coming, right?)
• Busy dual carriageway –  risk assessments?
• How do we notify people in the local area?
• If you send out flyers, how much personal information should you share about yourself when you are essentially telling a lot of people you will be out of your house for an hour?
• Local council will lend you equipment, but how do you know how much to get?
• What do you do about large items, or items that our local recycling centre will not take e.g. car tyres?

Some of the questions have been easy to answer and here are some of them.

• We are planning to organise a regular event on the 2nd Saturday of every month and will try and cover a different area each time.
• On Facebook there is a page set up by local residents for an exchange of information, so that could be used to tell people about the litter pick.
• If we do a flyer drop (through people’s letterboxes) we will simply put an email address as a contact.
• Council have suggested that if we leave bulky on nonrecyclable items visible and inform them, they will pick them up.

We contacted the organiser of the litter pick we did in Nursling and Rownhams and asked them for advice. As expected they came back very quickly and were supportive and keen to help.  They run their litter pick with support from their local church and their local borough council.

In fact their borough council that has a very useful page for community litter picks with health and safety guidelines and risk assessments that they have for their community litter picking groups.  It has given us ideas of documents we can set up ourselves and send to Southampton City Council for their input/agreement.

That is as far as we have got, but I feel quite fired up about it and very keen to make it happen so – watch this space.

 

This year, my husband John and I decided to buy each other an annual membership to the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens (formerly know as the Hillier Arboretum) for our birthdays in October and November respectively.

Part of the gift was an agreement to visit the gardens at least once a month.

By the way, we have realised that we are going to have to put a date in the diary for each month otherwise time just slips by and before you know it, you’ve missed a month.

October

Our first visit was, as you can imagine,  full of autumnal colour.  I had barely got out of the car when I had to take this first picture.  Such a lovely start to our first visit.

As we left the car and walked towards the gardens entrance, there is an avenue of deciduous conifers (Metasequoia  glyptostroboides).

I am very proud that the name trips of my tongue with barely a hesitation.  This is due to the fact that they are a favourite of  a very dear friend of mine who told me about them when she was studying horticulture at Sparsholt.  I have learnt to love them for their own sake. When given their due space they have a lovely conical shape and go the most amazing colour in the autumn.

 

In this approach, they were still green with hardly any signs of turning yet.

Hilliers have many activities and events that go on around the year, including Art in the Garden and the day we visited it was sculptures from recycled materials.

This next photo sums up autumn in the gardens for me.

Everyone seems to take a photo of this tree as they go past, and  I am sure it will turn up more than once in my posts of Hilliers through the year.

November

 

Visiting the gardens with my friend Jane (of metasequoia glyptostroboides fame),  we saw a vibrant flash of pink in the midst of the bare branches and evergreens.

Then we spotted, a few steps away, its close relative the Euonymus alatus rotundatus (winged spindle to you an me) doing its best to out do the spindle berries with its leaves.

Leaves be green eh?

December

 

The gardens are in full winter mode now and I love the bare branches of the deciduous trees against the sky.

They are so clever with the planting, these dark burgundy colours are offset beautifully by the golden stems of the ones behind….

…and these golden/red ones against the steely grey of the others.

 

It does the heart good to see flowering plants in winter..

..and when they smell beautiful it is even more pleasing.

Just before we left, we saw this rather unusual (to us) specimen.

This really appealed my love of the slightly weird and my love of science fiction.  I could imagine this in an episode of Star Trek!  Sadly we couldn’t get a better picture of these strange buds, but apparently they are about to burst into flowers which are small, delicate and  have a light scent.

I really did not expect to see such a wonderful display in deepest December, apparently the winter garden is renown,  and I doubt  I would have visited at this time had we not become members, so our gifts have already given us great and unexpected pleasure.

 

 

As my volunteering opportunities through this year are likely to come at irregular intervals, I thought I would write some of my posts about the kind of things I spend my time doing now I am not in regular work.

Beeswax wraps have existed for years, and were widely used to wrap and keep food in the days before refrigeration.

They lost favour as cling film, plastic bags etc. took over the food wrapping for many of us.

However, as we all become more conscious of the use of plastic, especially single use plastic items such as cling film, they are making a comeback.

You can buy these wraps online but they are very simple to make yourself, and I decided to make some for myself, and some as presents for friends and family.

You need to buy 100% cotton cloth –  the fat quarters that are sold for quilting are very useful and cost effective.  They measure 18″ x 22″ and are usually sold in packs.  You get a variety of cloth in the packs and you can cut them to suit your needs.

Next you need some beeswax.  I used pellets as I had them to hand, but you can use the bars, you will just need to grate them.

 

There are a couple of method for melting the beeswax.  You can do it in an oven or, as I did, simply use an iron.

Putting a thick blanket on my table to protect it, I put greaseproof paper on an oven tray, then the cloth (cut to size) with the pellets sprinkled over.

I covered it with another piece of greaseproof paper, set the iron to its highest setting and just used it to melt the wax.  I found it useful to use the iron to spread the wax around ensuring it covers all the cloth.

If I felt the cloth wasn’t covered enough in the wax, I simply added more wax. I was careful not to add too much wax as I wanted the cloth soaked in it, but not so thick it would flake off when bent.

Once satisfied that the cloth was completely covered in wax, I lifted it off the  paper immediately (I have asbestos hands), let it dry until set (this only takes a few seconds), then moved on to the next one.

 

The wraps can be used for wrapping hard cheese and fruit and vegetables, but because they can’t be washed in hot water, they are not recommended for meat, fish or poultry or soft cheeses.

They can be stored in a drawer, stitched to make sandwich bags or bags for vegetables,  and used to cover bowls and pieces of cut vegetables or fruit.  They allow the items they are wrapping to breathe and this is particularly good for cheeses.

To clean, you use a little bit of detergent and luke warm (not hot) water, wipe it with a cloth and store away once dry.

I chose the above method as it was my first time of making the wraps and this is the simplest way I could find.  However, I understand that there are other methods and recipes to try – e.g. adding jojoba oil to the wax will make it more flexible and pine resin apparently gives it a bit more ‘cling’.

I intend to do more research and perhaps try some other ways as we are so enjoying using them and my cling film use has gone down considerably – a successful experiment I would say.