Open Day - 27 June 2010
The good news was that our Open Day was was on the hottest day
so for of the year but the bad news was that we were in
competition with England playing Germany in the World Cup Football
competition. Nevertheless we had lots of visitors many of
whom stayed to the end rather than rushing off to watch the
football match. We made nearly £1000 which all goes towards
helping our service users. We thank all those who came and
spent money with us buying our produce or taking part in the
raffle.
The garden was looking particularly vibrant so many visitors
took the opportunity for a gentle stroll and to admire the plants
and vegetable. The children soon discovered the strawberries
in our fruit cage and the peas, but we were happy to loose some of
our crop.
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Our poppies were looking vibrant |
Visitors strolling in the garden |
One of the organised activities for children was "hunt the
duck", but the ducks were not live. However, there was
one live bird to entertain the children - a jackdaw.
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A keen duck hunter keeping his
records up to date |
Feeding peas to the the tame
jackdaw |
There were many fun things for visitors to spend their money
on. The cold cakes sold like hot cakes! Our craft products
were much in demand. Many people snapped up a bargain at our
brick-a-brack and book stall.
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| The array of tempting cakes and
buns |
Various craft items for sale |
Other activities included face painting and flower crown
making. There were demonstrations and exhibitions of
woodworking, metalworking, weaving and chappati making. There were
also guided tours of the garden. But some people just
preferred to sit and relax, and who can blame them.
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| Relaxing |
Flower crown making |
Live music included old music from an ancient instrument.
The picture shows the player having his face painted before his
performance. But most of the live music was pop music from
the 1960s. Well, some of us still remember Buddy Holly with
affection.
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| Chris having his face painted |
1960s pop |
We are indebted to Highworth Garden Club who, as in previous
years, came in to giver the final tidy up to our garden before the
event.
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Highworth Garden Club |
Funding from Lloyds TSB Foundation
We are pleased to announce that we recently received a £20,000
grant from the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales. The
grant will provide vital funds for the day-to-day running of the
charity, including staffing, over a 2 year period.
Faith Mitchell, Manager, said: “This is great news for us,
and for the people we help. We’re delighted to get the support
of Lloyds TSB and be able to continue our work”.
Following news of this grant, a Swindon Advertiser journalist
visited us to report the story which you can find here.
The picture below was taken by the journalist.
Foreground Cathy Turbinskyj and Faith Mitchell.
Back row clockwise from bottom left Michelle, Sarah, Jim and Rob
See the Lloyds TSB Foundation press release here.
Download our press release here
(pdf 108kb).
Faringdon and District Rotary Club helps R&B
Faringdon and District Rotary Club has helped us in many ways in the past
but members recently decided that they wish to give substantial
and continued support to us, for which we are extremely grateful.
So far, this support has including the funding and installation of
new fire guards to make our wood stoves safer. Last year, the Club
paid for insulation panels which we used to insulate our ceilings.
This helped us to get through a bitterly cold winter. Now,
the Club has purchased and installed attractive wood cladding for
the ceiling to really finish off the job of insulation and also
create a very peasant environment in our kitchen and craft room.
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Our new kitchen ceiling
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Our new fireguard for our kitchen wood
stove
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In addition to the improvements that the Club has
made to our facilities, it has also provided £1500 of funding to
cover the costs of one of our service users attending R&B for
the few months usually needed for them to make a big difference to
their mental well-being.
The rotary club present the cheque at our 2010
Open Day
Our totem pole is raised
| We started work on the totem pole in August
2008. Under the expert guidance of Chris Park,
various designs were carved on on the pole to represent the
range of activities undertaken at Root & Branch.
On 19 October 2009, the day came for moving the post into
position and manhandling it into the the hole and setting it
vertically with hard core sand and cement. Nobody really
knew how well this would work but Chris was confident and
his confidence was proved right.
After raising the pole, we all enjoyed a celebration
lunch.
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Summer 2009 at R&B
What can we say? This has not been the greatest summer
ever but it has had some good points. The weather has been
great for the garden. And it is wonderful to see so many
butterflies after many butterfly-lean years. Our new wild
flower area has gone completely and beautifully mad. It was
sown with a mix of wild flower seeds and spare seeds from the main
garden to produce an eclectic mix.
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| Onion harvest |
New wild garden |
Butterflies are back |
I am not sure whether it is because of the weather or despite
it that lots of people have been inspired to produce colourful
mosaics including house numbers.
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Some of the many mosaics made in our craft
room |
For older news items, click here.
Archive of our news letters
You can download our old newsletters as pdf files by clicking
on the links below.
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Archive or annual reports/reviews
You can download a pdf file of an annual report/review by
clicking on the link below.
Note that the later reports are called "Annual
Reviews" because they do not contain the detailed
accounts. However, our latest accounts, for the year
ending March 2009 can be downloaded as a pdf file here
(89 kb). Earlier accounts can be be found at our
entry in the Charities Commission web site. |
PDF means portable document format. You will need Adobe
Acrobat Reader to read pdf files. You can download this free
here.
Email us if you
want to go on our email distribution list. We will send you
future newsletters when they come out and send you notices of
events.
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