Wednesday 2 April 2014

The strimmer strikes..............back to square one!



Cloudy, misty, 18º little wind.

No birding today as I have been assisting the local housing association in helping older people use and understand technology, i.e. Laptops, tablets, smart phones, email, internet etc.

I have been doing a lot of work in our communal garden on a limited budget over the last 4 years trying to get the garden acceptable for all who live here. My partner Loren has been helping me a lot over the last year also.

When I arrived back home this afternoon the contract gardeners had visited for the first time this year and had strimmed an area of the garden that I had been nursing and growing for the last 2 years to keep as a foraging area for wildlife.

Needless to say I was furious; in fact I cannot remember the last time I was as angry as this and my language was not for the faint of heart. It has taken at least 2 years of letting particular wild plants grow and the area acts as a kind of corridor for birds, small mammals and insects that visit the garden and this has been totally ruined in around 15 minutes. AND not even a decent job done of it! The cutting of the grass is woeful and some areas that should have been cut have been left! WTF is going on!

What do we have to do to get quality and common sense here, there was a makeshift barrier (due to budgetary constraints) and this was totally ignored! There were flowers growing..............these were strimmed out of existence! There was a large pile of twigs and branches (from the winter storms) ready to be take away............these were completely ignored!

The previous contract gardeners were just as bad as this time last year we had marked out, with canes, where flowers were growing in the lawn............so what did they do...............strim the bloody lot................... they are not with us now but this lot have so far proved no better.

What is ironic is that I met with the local housing association and the new gardeners at the end of last year and we discussed and agreed on what areas I would tend and we would expect them to tend! 

Communication..........is it a dirty word?

 Part of the garden before.....
 Part of the garden after.....
 A Bumble Bee amongst the debris (courtesy Loren)

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