Fabulous Felting Workshop!

Lovely things!

We're lucky to have some very talented volunteers at Windmill. One is our resident poet, Stuart and another is Matt, who has become a talented photographer, and is currently in his second year of photography at Nottingham College. I thought Stuart's latest poem and a few of Matt's pictures would work well together, so hopefully you'll agree!

Nature, by Stuart Vanner

The prettiest pictures of beauty are formed by our nature's own.

Look out, for it is free and it is always alone.

We may see behind a sky that's blue and bold

Shines glorious globe of greatest gold.

And the winds which swirl in a wavy path

Blow tears of heaven, creating nature's bath.

Then may see the flowers and feel the breeze.

Watch and hear birds chirping in the trees.

And since our feelings are shaped by the weather

Reaching the Summer's day mood must be our greatest endeavour.

Our photo exhibition at the Central Library has just finished, but we'll be moving it to Radford-Lenton Library soon, and then hopefully, to Doctor's Orders.

May Family Fun Day coming up!

Come and help us to celebrate the May Bank Holiday at Windmill Community Gardens on 7th May! 

We're delighted to have story-telling and craft activities in the orchard again with Lauren from “Into the Wild Wood” who was such a hit last year. There will also be a chance to make a self-watering pot to take away, games, crafts and pizza-making in the clay oven, and Severn Trent will be there to give away great water-saving gadgets for you home.

We're hoping to have a Maypole again, and we're working on some fun water-based play, and being your local Community Garden, we've got lots of plants which you can take away for a donation, so come along to grab some bargains. We've got everything from Blackcurrants to Beans.

We're running from 12noon until 3pm, so hope to see you there!

This event is being supported by Nottingham Growing Network, through the People's Postcode Lottery.

Wonderful Willow from Windmill

Each year, there's a rhythm to the work we need to do at Windmill, and at this time of year, it's all about willow. We have a living willow arch and a fedge (living willow fence / hedge), which both need to be harvested for willow poles and then to have the thinner branches woven into the structure to strengthen it and help it grow nice and thick. The harvested poles can be used as living willow, and also to weave edges for our herb beds. They also make good plant supports, as long as we let them dry enough not to grow roots!




This year, we had a good team of Matt, Ash, Dan, Saana, Greg and Matt P, so we managed to get the whole lot done in one go, and it's now looking very organised and healthy. The cut branches are waiting to be used and the pussy willow from the ends is cut and ready for a rather special role.

We've always had the aim to use our resources at Windmill to benefit the community, so when members of the Ukrainian Church asked if we had any pussy willow available some years ago, we said "Of course. Take what you need!" Since then, Maria and Gary have been coming along every year to harvest the pussy willow in the weeks before the Ukrainian Church celebrates Palm Sunday (a week later than the Church of England).

Maria and Gary

This year, we asked if they could let us see how the willow is used, so they sent us some great photos to show us and the following explanation -

As you can see when the palms have been blessed, the people take them and it is tradition to put them over religious icons in the home.Palms were apparently hard to get in Ukraine in days of old, so willow branches were substituted, Pussy willows are the preferred branch, but ordinary willows will do in a pinch.  Long branches are cut, and are blessed during the mass.  They are then passed out, and people (mostly young ones) then go around hitting each other with them and saying: 

Не я б’ю,

Верба б’є,                    

За тиждень Великдень

Не далеко червоне яєчко!                    

Which translates to 

                    It’s not me hitting you, 

                    It’s the willow hitting you, 

                    In a week it will be Easter,

                    Soon you will have a red egg.

We love this tradition, and the tradition of the gathering that is has created in our Community Gardens, and our volunteers love the generous gifts of food and chocolates that we get in return!

We've also given willow for making willow domes and supplying a local willow worker with materials for weaving and live willow work.

Wishing you all a good Lohri and Wassail!

Wassail! And a good Lohri to all of you. If you are now thinking - "What on earth do they mean?!" then have a look here and here. What we mean, essentially, is that we got the new year at Windmill off to a great start by celebrating the harvest in the Punjab and celebrating fruit trees and looking forward to their harvest in Nottingham.

Hugh Miller's great photo from last year.

It actually all started with the wonderful Hugh Miller last year, who took such a lovely photo of us wassailing our Victoria plum tree, which helped us to advertise today's event - it got us even more interest than usual, including a mention in a Nottingham Post article and a mini documentary which is being made by a media student for their course! 

And this morning, the very wonderful Prakash who has been a mainstay of this event since its inception, got up at 4am to make us huge vats of gorgeous curry, vegetable rice and the kind of rice pudding that made everyone close their eyes in ecstasy when they tasted it. Then this afternoon, Jo, Kathy, Cicely, Shanaz, Ash, Jeremy, Claire and lots of lovely folk from Nature in Mind prepared fires, warmed the food and set out the kit to make ivy crowns for their hats, tickling sticks, and milk-bottle birds (just for fun). We provided wooden disks for people to write things they wanted to forget from 2017 and then burn them in the fire (or keep if it was a good memory). 

Getting the fire going at the main pidand starting the drumming

And then lots of lovely people turned up and had a great time getting ready for the wassailing, enjoying the food and then helping us with the actual wassail bit. We also had Mark Scoones who brought his wonderful drums for people to sit playing around the fire, and Cicely and Ash had prepared lots of sticks to use to toast marshmallows and toast on, which were very well used.

The second fire-pit - and the spring broccoli in blue!

Then came the wassailing. Tracey, Jeremy, Dianne and Derek have been practicing a bit since last year (ok, for the last week!), and actually did well enough to help the assembled folk to learn the Carhampton Apple Wassail. If you click on the link, you'll be able to hear it too, and we were thrilled that quite a few of the crowd had already done this as we'd shared it on Facebook, so we did the Apple tree proud, singing to it, putting toast in the branches, soaking the roots with apple juice, tickling it with the specially made tickling sticks, shouting "Wassail" and making a lot of noise with a huge variety of noise makers, from vuvusalas to ox-horns! Then we went on to wassail the old Victoria plum in the stone-fruit orchard over the bridge, which followed a similar pattern but with a different chant and no singing (it seems a bit rude to sing about apples to a plum tree...). On the way back, some of the attendees noted that the pear tree had been left out, so a few of us gave that a mini wassail.

Wassailing Victoria Plum

Here are the rhymes we used:

Carhampton Apple Wassail Song

Old Apple Tree we wassail thee and hope that thou might bear

For the lord doth know where we shall be come apples another year

For to bloom well and to bear well, so merry let us be.

Let everyone take off their hat and shout out to the old apple tree!

Pear and Plum Tree Wassail

Wassail the trees that they may bear

Many a plum and many a pear

For more or less fruits they will bring

As you do give them wassailing.

As usual, many stayed to enjoy the atmosphere for a while longer, and we realised we'd managed to persuade well over 50 people to spend a couple of happy hours in the fresh air on a dull January day, so hopefully a job well done. We'll see if the trees feel the benefit! 

Thank you to everyone who helped make our first festival of the year so successful.

Come and Join Us On Sunday 14th January to Start the New Year!

Come and help us to light up the darkest month at your Windmill Community Gardens! We’ll be mixing in elements of the Punjabi Lohri Festival with medieval traditions taken from Old Twelfth Night & other older ceremonies. 

From 2pm, there’ll be fires, drumming, good food & we’ll make decorations to hang in the fruit trees as we wassail them (Wassailing is an old tradition to celebrate fruit trees to ensure a good crop in the coming year).

We hope you can join us – please try to bring something to make noise with to help us wake up the trees!

Please Help Us!

Please, please vote for us in the Aviva Community Fund! Anyone can vote, from anywhere in the world, and Windmill Community Gardens really needs funds to create a warm and dry space for activities in Winter and bad weather. If you haven't yet voted for us in the Aviva Fund vote, please, please do! And if you can persuade friends and relatives to help, that would be even better!

We need as many votes as possible, not just 1000, so don't be put off and please vote before Monday!

Here's the LINK!

Look at us shivering in the chilly polytunnel, and look at all
those patched holes where the crows have pecked holes in it!