A couple of us ventured out on a very cold Saturday morning to meet the ever cheery Mike Shields (Council Parks Officer) and plant two plum trees (one "Opal" and one "Victoria"). Mike gave us a masterclass in staking, supporting and fencing in young trees. We'll look forward to enjoy the fruit of our labours (literally) in a couple of years.
On Thursday 21 March we visited Liberton High School allotments and planted onions and sown lettuce, radish, carrots, parsnips, rampion, rocket and other leaf and root crops. We'll be keeping an eye on our sowings through the school holidays and post the date of the next official visit soon. (Watch the events page!)
A few of us visited the Walled Garden by the Mansion House today. We are planning to take on a few vegetable beds, and develop an area of perennial edibles. It's exciting to see the plans to bring this abandoned space back into the life of the community and to be working alongside so many other groups.
Saturday saw the second of our Energy Fairs, run in conjunction with Liberton Kirk (aspiring eco-congregation) who provided us with the venue and insurance for the event. I'm glad to say it had an encouraging buzz from the start, with a good turn out to hear Sheila Gilmore, MP for Edinburgh East open it (thanks to Sheila for doing so and to Ian Murray for arranging that she do so, when he found himself called away to Westminster at the last minute). Once again we are very grateful to the Grassmarket Community Project for providing delicious food, and to our wonderful speakers: Sitar Ramsay (on Energy Saving in the Home), Pat Abel (on Transition itself) and Dr Richard Milne (on Climate Change and the difference between scepticism and denial – if you missed his talk it's on youtube and I can heartily recommend it). A big thank you also to our other stallholders: Gener8power (who also donated a voucher for our prize draw), Transition Edinburgh Pentlands, the Energy Saving Scotland Advice Centre, the British Heart Foundation and Changeworks (promoting the “Scots Together” scheme), Friends of St Katherine’s Park, the Friends of Burdiehouse Valley Burn and Wordpower Books. It was great to have you all there. And of course the biggest thank you goes to everyone who came along and helped make the day such a success – especially worth mentioning is that the British Heart Foundation ended up with a significant pile of old electrical goods for recycling and the way everyone gathered in to the Greenhouseholders workshop gave a real sense of community to the end of the event. |
SEE TransitionGrowing a sustainable future for our community. Archives
March 2015
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