Three Pigeons Post Sunday 26 July: Rafter grafters

Three Pigeons Post: Small Group Session Sunday 26 July 2020.

Harry: Raising the Rafters. Harry kicked off the session taking the new roof frame for a 1 mile walk from TW9 to the Beuccleuch Gardens lock up in TW10, as it was too big to fit in the car. Sadly no photos of what must have been quite a hallucinatory site early on a Sunday morning. Shades of Macbeth:* 'Till Three Pigeons Roof remove to Petersham.'*

Kate: Multi tasking. Lupin the loop. Cutting down the brown remains of the lupins, Rather than disposing of the brown remains with the other green waste, we are recycling them by composting them on the Plot. The decomposing plants will provide compost for the soil, a source of food (whitefly) for pollinators such as hover-flys and hopefully allow the seeds more of a chance to self set. Insect Hotel Housekeeping. Kate saw to some Insect Hotel maintenance including adding extra stones and terracotta pots to the pallet layers plus wielding a staple gun to add some temporary waterproofing material (black bin bags) to the exposed sides of top pallet to keep it dry until the new roof is ready. Ingenious Irrigation. Some of the newly planted acers are looking a bit dry and stressed as water tends to just sluice across the dry, hard, sloping surface of the soil around them. So Kate dug holes and ‘planted’ recycled plastic flower pots filled with stones, just uphill from individual acer, to act as little 'soak-aways' to help take water down into the soil where it is needed.

Salwa: Rafter Grafter. Salwa gave the new roof frame it’s first coat of white paint and then helped out with clearing the footpath and bagging up the mountain of green waste.

Naomi: In the Pink. Naomi did a fantastic job, battling with really poor quality paint, to give our GoodGym chair another coat of (pinky) red paint.

JP: Path Finder. During very high tides the river floods over the path and deposits nutrient rich mud which provides a fertile ground for weeds like dock and nettles. This week, with more suitable equipment, JP completed the job he’d started last Sunday and cleared the edge of the Thames Path below the Three Pigeons and with the help of Salwa and Kate bagged up all the green waste ready for collection by the Council contractors.

Returning later in the afternoon, it was fantastic to see how many people were stopping in this newly cleared space to chat, eat ice cream and enjoy the view.

Anita: Boomerang Mission. During the morning session Anita gave a group from the Hounslow Mosque a tour of the plot and explained the rationale behind the insect hotel. Returning back in the afternoon Anita finished off a few tasks: gluing the new The Three Pigeons Insect Hotel ‘pub signs’ to the pallets; shovelling & sweeping to clear the silt from the newly cleared area of Thames path; applying the silt to improve the soil in the Plot: planting 2 acers; and moving a grass.