Windmill - It's for the Birds!

We've been having a lot of fun at Windmill during the last few weeks, setting up a variety of bird-friendly features. Whilst birds can be a problem we like to encourage them - not least because they will seek out over-wintering caterpillars and grubs far better than we can - we're not just into them because they're cute, you know!

We've already got a great range of things which we know the birds enjoy - our hedges, our dead hedges (piled cut branches that provide cover and nesting sites), our teapot-nesting box, our robin box and our blue-tit box, as well as the big feeder in the orchard and a variety of seed-bearing flowers that we grow. And we mustn't forget the pot-store, which the robin always prefers to any other nest site...!!

That's a long list, but there's always room for improvement, so we were delighted when the lovely people from Nature in Mind visited a few weeks ago with a very keen bird-watcher in tow. He gave us lots of tips as we made up a variety of bird boxes. He suggested that the robin box should be moved to somewhere a bit more secluded, and that some sparrow boxes would be good, as well as a nesting shelf for a blackbird. We've done all that now, so hopefully the birds will be eyeing up the new des-res's. Nature in Mind folk also took away some boxes, promising to put them up, so we've hopefully spread the love all over Nottingham!

Nature in Mind show off some of their bird boxes.

In the meantime, our Monday group have been having a bit of fun with an idea we pinched off Winter Watch on the BBC. We've used old cups and an old toast rack to make a rather fancy bird feeder. We hope you like it! We'll let you know if the birds like it too.

Lard & seeds used to make bird-cake teacups
+ lard-soaked bread in the toast rack

Danny shows off the ingenious finished contraption

Rev up your garden composting with Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy Gardener!

We hope you can join us for a great course that we are running from late February through March which promises to help you bring health to your garden in simple and cost effective ways.

It's a composting course with local composting guru Karen Fry - it's a rotten job, and she's very good at it! The course is aimed at Nottingham residents with mild to moderate mental health issues and it's free to those on income related benefits.

See the posters below for full details.

Old Twelfth Night and Lohri Celebration

A chilly Windmill this morning

When we woke up on Sunday morning to a thick, white blanket of snow, we wondered how many folk would brave the cold to come and join us for our Old Twelfth Night and Lohri Celebration, but we needn't have worried! Lots of hardy people turned up and, by all accounts, had a lovely time (thanks for the great Facebook feedback!)

Folk like to congregate around the food area!

It's a favourite event of ours at Windmill, because we celebrate Lohri, which is a wonderful Winter festival in the Punjabi community (celebrating the harvest and longer, warmer days), and we've added in Old Twelfth Night - when it's traditional to wassail fruit trees in England. Mix the two traditions and you have a recipe for a great party.

Panorama of the site, showing our two fire pit areas - drumming at the bottom,
popcorn and feet-warming at the top!
Kitchen and lovely food at the left were also very popular!

We are extremely luck that the lovely Prakash has embraced the idea, and as she has every year since we started, provided us with lashings of delicious curries, puris and desserts, whilst her grandson entertained us with his dhol drumming. The vast vats of food disappeared remarkably quickly as everyone got in the mood, joining in the drumming (thanks to Mark from Nature in Mind for providing a great set of mixed drums and playing along) and stoking up the fires.

Prakash with Tracey

Making crowns and wands

Whilst all that was going on, it gave us time to make "wassailing wands" for the children and ivy "crowns" for anyone that wanted one (which seemed to be almost everyone!) as well as toast (of which more later). As we'd asked folk to bring something to make noise with, most people were already prepared, but we provided drums or a few odd noise makers to those in need and set off to wassail the trees. Ni, in her fabulous psychedelic cloak, led the ceremony as the children used their wands to tickle the trees awake. We joined in with wassailing rhymes, then all made a huge din as the children soaked toast in apple juice and hung it from the trees (to attract birds to come and eat the moths).

Wassailing the apple tree.

Ni leads the wassailing of the plum tree

Putting toast on the branches

One of our volunteers with her wassailing stick

Toast on the branches

Our youngest wassailer!

If you have a look on Facebook, you might even see a video of the proceedings.

We would like to thank Prakash and her grandson for their generosity, as well as Mark for drums, Kathy for running the kitchen and making the best mulled apple juice we've had, also to Ray, Hassan and the Rushton clan for their help in fire-starting, setting up, feeding and watering folk and tidying up. And a big thank you to everyone who brought their own mug, which made a huge difference to the amount of washing up we had to do!

No-one wanted to leave the washing-machine
drum fire-pit!

Happy New Year from Windmill!

We're also about to hold our first event of the year, the Old Twelfth Night celebration. We'll be wassailing our fruit trees, and adding in elements of the wonderful Punjabi Lohri celebration. If you fancy coming along, we'd love to see you. And if you are coming, it would be great if you can bring a mug so we don't need to wash up so much as the water is turned off for the Winter. A noise-making device would also be good, as we need to make noise during our wassailing!

Hope to see you there!

January is a great time to make a new start, so if you have resolved to get more exercise, or to get outside more or to be more sociable, we can help! Windmill Gardens are open for volunteers on Mondays (10 - 1) and Thursdays (10 - 4) and if you come on Thursdays you can get a meal for a small donation. We can offer activities to suit your level of physical ability and we've got cover if the weather is dodgy. We'd love to welcome you!

Magical Mosaics, Raging Rain!

We were thrilled that so many folk braved the deluge to come to Windmill Community Gardens and make gorgeous mosaic robins with the help of the wonderful and talented Anna Dixon. It was wonderful to see the care and attention that everyone gave to the task, and the lovely mosaic robins that they managed to create - each one to the same pattern but with its own distinctive character.

It was really chilly before folk arrived, but we proved that tea lights under clay pots will warm a polytunnel quickly, and that Tracey's pumpkin pancakes with caramel are just the thing to eat on a damp chilly day. Everyone who wanted, was supplied with hot drinks and / or hand-warmers as well, and those, together with 16 people in the polytunnel meant that we were warm and dry despite Noah's flood being re-enacted outside.

Thanks to those of you who have already posted photos of your finished robins on Facebook. We look forward to seeing more of them soon and displaying them here.

We wish you a good festive season. We'll be back at Windmill Gardens on the first Monday in January. so hope to see you then, or at our celebration of Old Twelfth Night and the Lohri festival on Sunday 17th January from 2pm, when we'll be wassailing our fruit trees and celebrating the Punjabi festival of Lohri.

Potions and Lotions Herbal Workshop

Just back from a really great workshop at Windmill with the wonderful Katherine Bellchambers - local Medical Herbalist who visited us in the Summer and was so popular, we asked her back!

Last time, she showed us all the plants with herbal possibilities that were growing on the plot, but this time, she helped us to make a variety of potions and lotions.

The polytunnel now smells amazing, and lots of happy people have now left clutching the various great balms, rubs and teas they made up. We've also had some great social media feedback - the wonders of technology!

We already have ideas for more herbal work, so watch out for updates!

Tidying Up at Windy Windmill

November has been a month of strong winds, but it hasn't held us back, and we're well on track to get the place sorted in time for the worst of Winter.

We had a nice group today, with some old friends returning, so welcome back to Emma and Ray, and some new faces back for their second visit with a view to becoming part of the team - so welcome to Matt (and Anna) and to Shanaz.

First job of the day was to give the hugelkultur bed and the strawberry bed a good tidy up. We've been a bit lax, so the brambles have tried to take over. They are like someone at a bar reaching over everyone to get their drink, but in this case, the tip of the "arm" can root when it touches the soil, so brambles can "walk" around a plot making lots of new plants. We have used this tendency to our benefit, making our cultivated blackberry hybrids do something similar by pegging down the stems into the ground where they root. We've also done it with soft fruit bushes when they have drooping lower branches - a technique called layering. If anyone would like a berry bush or raspberry canes, let us know!

Hassan plants strawberries around the hill bed

Ray weeds out the last of the flowers, which were in full
bloom before the frost last week.

Lunch was well earned with a nice pumpkin soup that went down a treat, followed by a cake brought in by Emma - a great way to get in our good books from the start!

The happy band of pumpkin soup enthusiasts.

Afternoon jobs involved some bed clearing now that our flowers have finally succumbed to frost (thanks Shanaz!), and also cleaning the polytunnel roof, which was tackled by Matt with great care (and a squeegee mop!)

Matt - king of the squeegee mop

Shanaz weilds her rake with skill.

With any luck, things will be looking amazing for our Herbal workshop on Sunday 6th December, but we've got our fingers crossed as apparently the weekend will bring some thoroughly Scottish weather with gales and blustery showers. Doesn't help that we've agreed to do a stall on the windiest day - we'll have to tie Mark to the gazebo!