Being Mrs C

Full of festive cheer

Tonight I'm planning a night on the sofa. It may not be the most exciting way to spend a Saturday night, but I'm in the middle of a "six Christmas parties in five days" marathon and I'm shattered! The final one is tomorrow and as much as I've enjoyed them all it has been a bit full on.

The picture above shows where I was on Thursday night though - the Houses of Parliament in central London. On behalf of the Watercress Wildlife Association (where Mr C and I are volunteers) I attended a reception that was hosted by our local MP, Anne Main, to thank volunteers in St Albans for the work that they do. I was there with our committee chairman, but in total there were eighty of us from across the voluntry sector. People I chatted to ranged from someone who volunteers at their local church, through to members of a local residents association and someone who spends time teaching local prisoners English as a foreign language. It was a fantastic opportunity to find out what other local charities are up to and also brilliant to see how many people in St Albans gve up there free time to help others.

The big highlight of the night had to be a tour of Parliament and as neither house was sitting we were able to go into the chambers of both the Commons and the Lords. I should say that if you ever get an opportunity to visit then do take it up. After all, Parliament is there for the people, are MPs are there to represent us and our taxes go towards its upkeep.

There is a lot of tradition in Parliament and just hearing about the old-fashioned way that things happen there is fascinating. Many things have stayed that way for years and you have to wonder just how long it can stay like that in this modern age. The decoration is opulent in a way that doesn't always come across on the TV cameras and the chambers are also so much smaller than they look on TV. There was something slightly magical though about standing there in a place that you see so often on the TV news. 

We obviously weren't the one people to think that it was such a special place as just before we were taken into the Commons Chamber there was a young couple in there also visiting. Their visit is likely to be one that one day they will tell their children all about for one particularly special reason though; whilst in there the man got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend, in front of the slightly bemused policeman who looked on. And the good news for him is that she said yes!

Visitors are not allowed to take photographs on their tours so I'm afraid that you'll have to make do with my photograph from outside, but then I'm guessing most of you know what much of the place looks like already. If you want to see more then you should definitely try and get yourself on a tour.

Sunny Sunday

Yesterday was one of those days that was just perfect for being outside. Lucky really as that's what I did pretty much all day. Down at our local nature reserve we had a day's hedge laying tuition where a group of volunteers were learning how to lay a hedge, and practicing on one of our ones on the site. Meanwhile a regular monthly working party was also taking place, along with a willow weaving workshop. Workers always need feeding though - so that was my role. Tea and cake breaks for the workers, plus a BBQ lunch for everyone involved. 

It was all hard work, and boy did I ache by the time it came to go to bed last night, but it was a rewarding day too and a great community event to boot. If you want to find out more about our local nature reserve then please take a look here at their new website, cleverly designed and put together by Mr C.

Big Garden Birdwatch - Part 2

 

Whilst the physical location for my second stint at the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch wasn't quite as comfortable as my kitchen there did seem to be plenty more birds on display down at the WWA today.

Whilst others took part in the main working party activity the bird spotting team managed to see the following:

• Bullfinch
• Redwing
• Great spotted woodpecker
• Blackbird (2)
• Collared dove (14)
• Greenfinch
• Robin (2)
• Blue tit (3)
• Dunnock (3)
• House sparrow
• Song thrush (2)
• Jackdaw (20)
• Chaffinch (5)
• Goldfinch (1)
• Long tailed tit (5)
• Wood pigeon (6)
• Great tit (2)
• Magpie (2)
• Wren
• Mallard (6)
• Coot (2)
• Black headed gull
• Kingfisher
• Gadwalls (6)
• Little grebe (2)
• Siskin (2)
• Water rail

Pretty impressive in just an hour and certainly counting them all felt like hard work. By the end of it we felt like we deserved the refreshments just as much as those that had spent the morning digging!

 

A wet weekend

After an incredibly wet Saturday we were woken in the early hours of Sunday morning by yet more rain. Looking out of the bedroom window the wind was raging, the road turned into a river and several rumbles of thunder passing overhead. We therefore headed down to the WWA this afternoon expecting to see some degree of damage from the weather. Luckily we were proved wrong.

The butterfly garden seemed to have escaped the worst of the wind, and with only a couple of small exceptions, most of the plans were still standing proud. There weren't that many butterflies to be seen today, but the bees did seem to be out in force.

The coots that live on the Mere were out and about with their chicks. We think there were eight in total. Quite an impressive number when you consider that the heron was keeping a keen watch on them from afar.

They are such incredibly cute fluffy bundles, but catching that look in a photo is somewhat difficult!

The rain had certainly made a difference to our new pond on site. We think that the water level must have risen about at least 3 inches in the last 24 hours. As I sit here typing this we're in the middle of another storm, so by now it may have increased further!

The water was a bit too murky to be able to see much life apart from that on the water's surface. It looks promising though as there were quite a few pond skaters visible, and what may have been a leech at the water's edge. (Mr C's currently looking it up to see if we were correct or not) As we walked away a large dragonfly also came to visit. A good sign that the pond is attracting exactly the sort of wildlife that we were hoping it would.

Pond digging

This morning was one of the monthly working parties down at the WWA and today we started work on the new nature pond that we are creating.

Previous attempts had been made at digging the pond out by hand, but we soon realised that doing so would be a little bit more difficult than we first imagined. Instead we hired a mini digger for this working party so that we could make a real difference in starting the pond, rather than just the shallow attempt we had before.

 

Mr C looked like a small child at Christmas when he got to use the digger and I'm pleased to say that he seemed to be doing a pretty proficient job of it. Maybe he should consider JCB driver as a new career choice if the current one doesn't work out.

The aim is for the pond to provide a habitat for amphibian and insects that like to live in or near water. It looked like some creatures were already impressed with the work we'd done as we managed to see several newts in the water, as well as a pond skater on the surface and this little frog in the grass nearby. They do say that nature will start to inhabit new ponds pretty quickly, but we had no idea it would be quite this quick!