Today's gardening session and project development 6/3/24

My post content

I managed to get my car through to the hub, and the men helped me carry the wood into the space. One of the guys told me he’d been thinking about the bench and said PYROGRAPHY!! I said I had been thinking the exact same thing! He was looking into getting himself a set and said we could try it out with the bench, with daffodils and leaks for Wales and the season and colours such as red, blues, yellows, he mentioned, alongside the names of the gardeners…how amazing! We are meeting tomorrow at 1pm to construct the bench, they both are taking time out of their days to do this…I am so grateful.

The gardening today was encompassed by the warmth and radiant sunshine and blue skies. I met another gardener and two new ladies came along. One lady used to be the head gardener at B&Q, and so I learned a lot from her as we (sadly) pulled out weeds to make space for the planting of sunflowers. Later, she asked about the project with the bench and I mentioned pyrography… this lady loves art, and has a degree in fine art and worked with children with learning disabilities supporting them through art, so she is interested in the project and said she has a pyrography pen she could bring by with wood to practice on…. Everyone can have a go at designing and creating for the bench! Exciting, as interests seem to align and fall into place. She and Ros also mentioned lining the back of the planters, too.

A beautiful thing said by this lady: the smell of the earth is so fresh at the moment...I enjoyed the smells so very much, so relaxing and healing...got to consider the plants that go into the bench which may create this sense of peace!

I have such wonderful discussions whilst gardening, and everyone agrees this….we spoke birds, identifying plants, growing, passing on knowledge to grandchildren with one lady…. Everyone had their own job and happily got busy doing these in the sun. I am yet to ask about permission to record audio of gardening and process, as I mentioned to Ros and she thought it’d be beautiful to gather sounds of chatting between the gardeners in the birdsong outdoors on Ponty park…I had some incredibly rich and beautiful chats, alongside a wonderful quiz hosted by the quizmaster which we all enjoyed and he enjoys putting on, that would have been so lovely to record…but the time didn’t slot well enough or feel right to say, as I didn’t want to disrupt the natural flow and interactions…this being said, a great brainstorming day with the group…and thank you sunshine!

Ros told me about the bird song identifier app ‘Merlin’ which records the log of the birds anyway, and she said she’d love to send some of her local Ponty woods recordings my way. I have to get this app! I just need to tweak the posters and then send these off to Ros to put on the Facebook group.

Tasks now to do:

Bench building

Designing and pyrography making

Collating and gathering sounds

Double checking with Becky that the plan for the live stream is okay before purchasing...note no wifi in building, so thinking about hotspots or dongles....also note they do have extension leads