FoMBL Work Party Report 25.06.16

Volunteers: 13
Saturday 25 June turned out to be another great working party, following some rain fall on Friday night. We had 13 volunteers - some regulars and some new faces.

We got to work straight away. While Heather and Kay spent time tending to the panoramic notice boards and picking up litter - a job that is always needed- David, Tanya and Eileen did a great job edging paths along Boroughloch Walk. As you can see from the picture attached, it looks much better.

As like last month, Bob did some tree feathering near Leven Terrace while Martin worked hard on a large tree on Leamington Walk.

Andy is still working his way through the large pile of earth in East Meadows and with help from M.A managed to fill lots of holes throughout the Meadows.

Alec, Derek and I spent the morning pulling weeds and overgrown grass from the central bed at the Bruntsfield Hotel end of Leamington Walk. Anyone who walks that way will most likely know how bad it was getting. We managed to fill two bags of roots, weeds and clippings. This was work that Eileen and I started last month. Derek finished at coffee break, and Alec and I continued. The Park Rangers will be barking the area sometime soon to avoid the overgrowth again.
Robin also popped along to help out for a short while with litter picking.

After a well earned coffee break and a chat, we got back to work. Derek, Martin and Heather left us to it and we all continued on our tasks.

Our next FoMBL Working Party will be held on Saturday 30 July. As always, all members are welcome and any non-members are encouraged to come along and see what we do. Meeting place remains at the Pavilion Cafe at 10am, where we are lucky to receive £1 coffee on our break.
I hope to see many of you next month!

Tammy Rudduck

FoMBL Work Party report 28.05.16

This morning I formally handed over organisation of work parties to Tammy Rudduck, who nobly gave up her time on a Saturday when she was actually in the middle of moving house!  Commiserations and warm thanks to her partner, who no doubt bore the brunt of all this.

Tammy now holds the keys to the Pavilion shed.  She gave out the necessary tools etc. and organised the work. 

Ann Leith and I worked on the two noticeboards at the top of Jawbone Walk: the locked board had a lot of graffiti on the back, which we managed to remove, using the special fluid given to me a while ago by Mike Shields.  I have now left it stored in the Council shed behind the Pavilion, for future reference.  It did the job well, in the end, after quite a struggle!  We also worked on the front, and on the information board on the path opposite.  Ann then had to go.

After the break Suzanne Mackenzie and her two boys, and another young friend, joined me in cleaning the information board at the 'crossroads' of Middle Meadow Walk and North Meadow Walk.  The boys also picked litter and handed out FOMBL leaflets to passers-by, most efficiently.  While Suzanne was finding somewhere to rinse our cloths the boys took turns in reading out the now clean (and legible) information board, with its history of the Meadows.  They were intrigued to discover that it had previously been a loch.

We then went back to the Pavilion, and did some more work on the noticeboards there (the boys were perfectionist: Ann and I hadn't been efficient enough!).  When they were finally satisfied, we adjourned to the Helen Acquroff Memorial Drinking Fountain near by (see the last newsletter), and though we didn't have the proper tools, somehow managed to remove a lot of weeds that were clogging up the surrounding paving.   Ideally this should be done professionally and re-pointed.  But in the meantime, the boys found that litter-pickers actually made good tools for cleaning out the gaps between the paving slabs.  Many thanks indeed to them for all their hard work.

Heather Goodare