Christmas Pierced Tin Lantern Workshop

Christmas Herbal Workshop

2016 Pumpkin Celebration - What an amazing day!

The bee pumpkin - one of our "show stoppers"

Wow! That was an amazing day! We began with a pumpkin carving session in the polytunnel, for more than 20 people, which produced some gorgeous results and plenty of pumpkin to cook with.

The dragon's eye

The dragon himself

After the carving, we set up for the Celebration in the afternoon, laying out all the "show stopper" pumpkins that people had carved for us in advance, and people started to arrive with amazing tasting food! We had recipes from Bengal, Palestine, Pakistan, the US and the UK, and we got some great reactions. As usual, the typical response was, "I didn't know I liked pumpkin, but I do now!"

My little pumpkin!

Autumn leaves

Another dragon

A scary wolf

We also had all kinds of games and activities, including happa soma, coin balancing games, "get the eyeball in the pumpkin", apple-slinky making and we even created a well-dressing! There was a wonderful spooky woods over the bridge with some scary scarecrows for those in the halloween mood, and of course, we kept carving pumpkins all afternoon.

Our very own Donald Trumpkin

So many carved pumpkins!

Then as it began to get dark, we lit all the pumpkin lanterns and the effect was stunning! We gave prizes to the best ones and praise to all the rest. Special mention to Kelly who rounded off proceedings with a stunning display of fire-poi work. We'd love to see any videos folk took of that!

A Spockactular pumpkin!

Snakes and ladders!

A lovely example of peeling on a pumpkin.

Our Pumpkin Celebration was made possible only by the hard work of the volunteers who got the site ready and those who helped on the day. Thanks to Kathy, Cicely, Ash and Rowan for the pumpkin carving in advance, also to Penney and Gil for some of the show-stoppers, to Rachel and Jeremy for helping from dawn to dusk with cooking, fire lighting and washing up, to Ash for manning the apple press, to Cicely, Mo and the girls for setting up the spooky woods (and to Mo, Rebecca and Kelly for the fabulous scarecrows), to Matt for doing such a stunning job clearing up the nettle patch, and then helping out all over the place whilst still finding time to take great photos, to Jo and Gem for looking after the games, to Hassan, Jeremy, Shanaz and Zariffa for food cooked on site (and all the others who brought food along) and to Paulette who got lured on site with promises of fun and food, then ended up put to work on the jam and plant stall! We must also thank Greg, Mary, Dan, Danny, Jack and Tony for their help leading up to the event. Well done all!

Bob Marley made a welcome appearance!

Some of the competition pumpkins

Chewbacca!

A clever original design from an NTU student

Gem's amazing lion peeling

The bee pumpkin lit up

Two Great Events Coming Up on Sunday 30th October!

Amazing Pumpkin Event Coming Up!

Normal Service is Resumed!

After last week's wonderful but exhausting Garden Party, the volunteers have had a lovely day doing the varied and fun things that make Windmill such a great place. Danny, Jack and Dan did a wildlife survey to see how our many different wildlife-friendly features are doing. Alex and Valerie started designing a new wood carving, Chris worked on another carving. Hassan and Brian tackled the bindweed that's taken over the fruit cage and Tracey, Zariffa and Shanaz made a lovely slap up lunch of savoury rice and lentils, with a salad of chrystal lemon, lollo biondo lettuce and edible flowers, followed by rasmalai and summer pudding. Then Joyce and Matt turned up ready and willing to do all the washing up! Well done all!

Alex working on the design for the sign

Danny collecting edible flowers for the salad

Zariffa makes sure the freshly picked salad is perfect

Lunch!

Rasmalai! Thanks to Shanaz for the amazing desert!!

The Feel Good Garden Party at Windmill Community Gardens

Wow! What a lovely turn out for the garden party, in perfect weather. Thank you to everyone who came and to all the volunteers who helped. Here are some of our photos.

Hassan making the pizza bases using
dough from the fab Small Food Bakery
at Primary - thanks Kimberley Bell!

Mark manning the oven, though confused
about the season!

Instant cheesecakes using our rasps as a topping

Happa soma!

The amazing Lisa from Warrior Wellbeing doing her
unique massage style.

Thanks to Nature in Mind for the drumming

Trying out the "do it yourself foot spa"

Admiring the beans.

Lunch sir?

Trying out happa soma

Windmill gets a Spring-clean from E.ON

We enjoyed a wonderful session at Windmill today, as we were joined by a group of hard working and eager volunteers from E.ON. Any community garden gets a build up of jobs that it doesn't have enough time or people to do, and team days like this make a huge difference to us, so we were delighted to host them.

The main aim of the day was to get 2 of our high raised beds replaced. These beds have done us great service over the years, but their wood has eventually succumbed to rot, and they were gradually falling to bits. The work team carefully dismantled them, then set to work rebuilding with fresh timber, under the expert eye of Alan Withington who joined us for the day.

Removing the old wood

Preparing the edge of the bed to allow the bed to be set level

Alan Withington - our expert bed-maker

Replacing the wood around the soil left in place

The rest of the team set about weeding our paths and replacing the wood-chip surface. They did a fabulously thorough job, which made a huge difference to the appearance of the place.

E.ON's  wonder-weeders in action

Another group sanded down and repainted the benches around our fire pit, so visitor can be reassured that they will continue to have a comfortable, non-splintery seat when they visit.

Our regular volunteers also got down to work and re-organised our plant nursery area, as well as planting out sweet peas and weeding our growing crops.

Regular volunteers weeding our onion bed.

Volunteers Shanaz and Omar did us proud with a wonderful lunch of dhal, rice, pakoras and chutney, alongside a delicious pudding, which was much enjoyed by the willing workers.

Huge thanks to everyone at E.ON for all your hard work, and to Audrey who stood in for Tracey for the day, as she managed to break her leg when she was on holiday.

One of the newly finished high raised beds

Paths weeded and re-bark chipped

Benches now smooth and back to a lovely blue with
an environmentally friendly wood stain

The slabbed path in the background - not a weed in sight!