Richmond

Community mission

🐦🐦🐦 Three Pigeons Post: Wetting the Bed

4 GoodGymers made their way to help their local community in Richmond.

  • Kate Holmes
  • Anita
  • JP
  • Removed User
 
Sunday, 19th of July 2020
 
Led by Anita
she/her

Three Pigeons Post, Anytime sessions week ending Sunday 19 July 2020. 'Wetting the Bed'

Despite occassional rain, The Three Pigeons remains very dry and the focus of this week's drop-in sessions was keeping everything watered, literally 'wetting the bed'. Here's what we got up to:

Tuesday14 July. Anita. Swanee River .

An afternoon watering session, with a pair of swans to keep me company at the riverside. Back home I created and ordered a couple of 'Three Pigeons Hotel' signs in GG colours to decorate the front and back of the hotel.

Thursday 16 July JP. Wetting the bed.

On an overcast but warm Wednesday afternoon, JP took a break from analysing rugby club revenues and player wages to head over to the 3 Pigeons site and slosh a bit of Thames water around. Armed with his trusty red Vileda bucket, he parked up and enjoyed an excellent work out lugging full buckets up from the steps and throwing the contents over the flowerbed, paying particular attention to the newly planted additions. Plenty of people stopped to thank him for his efforts and it's clear to see the rewards for all our efforts are being appreciated by the locals. Which is great, because this session was hard work, and came with 2 near-slip-overs and a very wet pair of shoes... Water way to spend the day.

*Thursday 16 July Anita. Late to the Party. *

Arrived at 3.15pm to find someone had beaten me to it and done a really thorough job of watering. I did stay for half a dozen trips down to the river with my trusty green trugs, giving the new acers a really good soaking.

Friday 17 July. Anita. ‘Skip Rat and Salvage Queen’.

Anita did some prep work for Sunday’s group session, sourcing additional material for the insect hotel. Firstly an appointment at the Townmead Road Waste and Recycling Centre, getting VIP treatment and skipping the long queue of cars, in order to collect material that Mick Mallon and him team had set aside. A particular ‘Thank you’ to Phil (see photos) who helped to load the car with pallets, terracotta, roof tiles, wood and woolens. Next stop Ham Lands, ruler in hand, to source more logs to create homes for solitary bees. Goodgym Richmond have for some time been helping the Friends of Ham lands with their conservation work. During a pre-lockdown session, I had helped to clear recently felled ash from the meadow, wheel-barrowing it to a log pile under the trees, so I knew exactly where to find the perfect logs. Back in Richmond, I sourced a head and foot board from an old cot from a nearby skip, then painted them black to create the two sides of a temporary gabled roof for the Hotel. Unfortunately the bed boards aren’t quite wide enough to protect a whole EUR1 pallet but a temporary pitched roof will provide some rain cover and should stop the whole thing looking like a pile of pallets. The permanent slate roof will be much bigger and better and a much more solid affair.

Saturday 18 July 2020. Anita & Harry. ‘Chainsaw Ash-Disc-Maker’

More preparatory work for Insect Hotel building at the group session on Sunday: Harry wielding a chainsaw to cut the 10cm diameter logs into various sizes; Anita sawing off the cot ’legs’ and finishing the painting of the panels for the temporary roof.

Report written by Anita


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Anita
Led by Anita

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