New Lake in Mayow Park

 Since the snow melted Mayow Park has been getting a bigger and bigger lake in the dip in the meadow area, not far from the cafe. Dogs and kids have loved having a paddle in it. I’m not sure the poor tree in the middle (a black poplar) is having such a fun time though - hopefully it’ll be OK. Our new lake is a really lovely brown colour surrounded by mud but in a lockdown anything can appear exciting and having such a large amount of water and a paddle board in the shed...well we did start joking about it. 

Our relatives in Australia on the morning Zoom call (who have warm weather and turquoise sea at their disposal) were very keen for us to do it. So on my morning dog walk I saw my husband stroll into the park with the big backpack on and couldn’t quite believe he was actually going to do it.

Anyway it’s a great board that you unroll and pump up and it comes on all our seaside trips.

People started wondering what he was up to as he got inflating. Anyway off he went to have a paddle round Mayow lake (with no fin clipped on in case it was too shallow). The dog was very excited and soon was on the board too!

So exactly one week after the snowy snowman Sunday we had paddle-board (or puddle-board?) Sunday.

I think it made people smile and we got the video to send to the Australians! Honestly though... a muddy puddle-lake compared to Manly Beach... Oh well, it really is the small pleasures these days. I’m actually pretty good at paddle-boarding but for some reason didn’t feel like showing off my skills. I’ll let the husband take the glory this time (and Scooter).

Pippa Moss

Mayow Winter Wonderland

 What a pleasure on Sunday just gone (24th January) to head into Mayow after a couple of hours of heavy snowflakes descending, to see the park all white and becoming a snowman art show!

I had headed there with my dog Scooter who was witnessing snow for the first time and rather loving it.

My children, now a tween and teen, were not dressed in time to come with me (at midday!!) but I felt like a kid myself and repaired with great pleasure a head back onto a rejected toppled snowman - Scooter then promptly ran off with the stick arm!

There were some real works of art as you can see in the photos and it was a pleasure to see family groups taking photos next to their achievements. We had all got so tired of the mud and my word it had been SO muddy in the park recently. The white stuff was so much better to see.

It did only last that morning and early afternoon as it then started to drizzle and mostly melted the snow. However it was a magical morning and brought much-needed smiles to everyone.

So good to clear the Covid news-filled head - even so, I’d only been out the house for two minutes when the thought popped into my head ‘The NHS really don’t need anyone slipping over right now.’ In a way, that was a real concern and since Sunday the ice in the park does need watching out for.

Lockdown and what we are hearing in the news cannot help but dampen all our spirits but our dear park, which really does change weekly (even if some weeks it’s just that a temporary pond has arrived!), and all the friendly familiar faces you see as you do the loops is just such a saviour.

But the snowman day was the one which saw real joy back in people’s faces - I wish we could bottle that joy and eek it out over the next weeks - until the snowdrops and daffodils come (with the hope too of entering a lower tier!). Stay safe all.

Pippa Moss FOMP

New tree map and leaflet (Oct 2020)

 We, the FOMP committee, have just finished producing a very smart 6 page leaflet with a map of the park on the other side. There was a previous map but it was produced some 20 years ago! We feel really proud of this new map/leaflet which will debut in the next issue of the Sydenham Society News as a pull-out centre spread.

We owe so much to Jody McLeish, who designed the whole thing for us. He knows the park from when he lived here but is now living in Kent. (He also designs the Sydenham Society News.)

Using the map people can find out the names of some of the fantastic trees in Mayow Park. For some tree types there's also further information. I loved learning about the Tulip Tree especially. The map includes images of some of the birds often seen in the park too. 

In the leaflet we've given info on the history, facilities and the FOMP group.

Of course people will have opinions on what it could have included but we do hope readers will learn something new from it and appreciate the work that's gone into producing it (and in Jody's case I'm sure a lot of patience as it took a fair few proofs for us to finally sign it off).

It's been wonderful to see the old out-dated map reproduced looking so smart (with the typos gone!) and the basic text we typed up transformed into smart panels with photos.

We can't wait to see how it now looks printed inside the SydSoc magazine. Only compliments allowed...hours of volunteers' time lovingly went into it! Anyway we are confident you'll want to grab a copy! 

Additional copies will be printed within a few months for distribution to the wider community.

Text: Pippa. Photo: Alona

Keep Mayow Tidy (and follow the regs!)

 Words by Pippa Moss; Photos A Sheridan

Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean, usually held in March, was of course postponed this year – a pandemic arrived! FOMP had planned a litter picking event for it, which we had to cancel. The postponed GB Spring Clean happened in September instead. Friends of Mayow Park couldn’t organise anything big and official with all the social distancing regulations so we just chose a date and gathered six volunteers. It fell under the permitted Lewisham Covid volunteering category of ‘tending and managing habitats’. Our intention was therefore to clear the woodland and grassland habitats within the park of littered items and make them safer for wildlife. We were able to let Glendale (the team that manages the park on behalf of Lewisham Council) and the Safer Neighbourhood Team know the date so they could separately, but on the same date, be in the park too. Glendale helpfully provided bags, picker sticks and took away the litter!

It went very well. Between the 3 groups we collected 24 bags of litter, a random Hoover and a teddy bear as well! We headed into the bushes and woodland areas that we could access so it was a thorough job! Extra point for me for managing to get a sore shoulder from also carrying around a large heavy hand sanitiser bottle in my handbag!

We were all shocked by the amount of wet wipes - they overtook Haribo sweet packets by far this year. These wipes will sit around for years, they don’t decompose and they certainly don’t help the wildlife in the park.      

 I think we all know wet wipes have their uses. I used to pride myself in the baby days of what I could clean up with just one wet wipe - and I always disposed of it responsibly. The fact we probably collected 200 of them shows they are being used excessively and carelessly.

                     

Next litter pick I plan to collect recycling separately - it is rather depressing when it all gets lumped together. It might involve some bag juggling but I think it will be worth it - cans and bottles are a big part of what we collect.

The community has really been enjoying Mayow Park during these last 6 months - we know this space has been really valuable to all of us to escape our homes, which we have spent so much time in. To be honest after all these months of heavy use, the litter pick could have been a much greater challenge - it just shows that most people really are caring for the park. There is also a growing awareness that any bags left neatly tied next to the bins with the best of intention, do in fact end up shredded by foxes. They need to be taken home.

Anyway the great thing is that there are always willing volunteers to help on these litter picks, and anyone who has never used a litter picking stick always states how great they are to use! I’m still trying to find a handbag friendly one... see me soon on Dragon’s Den with my telescopic handbag litter picker invention!

Pippa Moss September 2020

Clearing the fruit area at the Triangle beds by Pippa

It seems the combination of weather events this year (excess rain followed by warm and dry weather) meant our currant and berry bushes were being heavily invaded by long grass, nettles, 'sticky buds' (also known as cleavers, Latin name Galium aparine) and the odd bramble and in fact when we started this clearing project the fruit bushes were really very hidden. 

As people stopped to say hello we explained what they were and many hadn't realised. Anyway it's pretty rewarding pulling up all that stuff (bar nettles, hate those, I always get stung) and gives you a feeling you are 'freeing' the good stuff. 

The currents and raspberries are already fruiting in small form on the plants so there should be a good crop for people to pick a few as they go past. 

The plum and apple trees look better too. The plum fruits suffer from 'pocket plum' and no longer form proper fruits. 

We cleared loads of 'weeds' the first session. A second session was needed to finish that job - by now I was crawling pretty much inside the fruit bushes as you get slightly obsessed with getting every last strand of grass out.

Alona then wheelbarrowed the good-quality compost we'd created in our bin in the park, and we started spreading it around the cleared beds. It looks really great now.

During these sessions I was very distracted by The Triangle looking stunning with Forget-me-nots (Myosotis) but really taken over by the 'sticky buds' so I couldn't resist clearing some of those out.  There's bindweed in there too though that's a big job for next time.

It was great to be back having a 'presence' in the park (Alona and I working at 2m apart was easy). People do always stop to ask questions and we can remind them about FOMP.

We even had our first FOMP Zoom meeting this week so the Friends certainly are still being active despite many of our planned activities having to be cancelled.  At least we got our new benches (from the Greening Fund) put in just before lockdown. Just a reminder that we always are looking for more people to join the small but active FOMP committee!

The butterfly that couldn’t fly by Indie (age 10)

I’m wriggling around in this little see-through tub. Something is shaking me around but I stick to the side of the tub like the four other caterpillars. I remember lying in the grass, my stomach full of leaf... Now I'm here, but I don’t mind because there’s some kind of brown food-mush at the bottom. I try to talk with my roommates but they just munch on the brown stuff. That stuff is AMAZING. So for a bit, I just lie on the floor, looking at the walls.

Suddenly a giant is staring right at me and babbling on! I don’t speak giant so I wriggle to the other side. It gets quite cold so the giant wraps a soft thing around our tub. It’s a bit loud too - I can hear some weird up-down music. Still, I keep munching and after a while I notice how fat I’ve become! I decide it is time to wrap myself in a cosy cocoon, and I feel safe and secure. But one day it breaks and I am sitting (yes I am sitting - I have legs!) on a paper thing, with a mesh wall towering above me. 

The giant comes along and makes more noise, pointing it’s long pink fingers at me. That’s when I feel something odd on my back, so I squirm around, noticing I can move them! Eventually, I realise if I wriggle hard enough I fly! I go up to the top of the mesh!

By now two other caterpillar mates have come out and boy they look different - like me I guess! Suddenly I'm out in the world! I can see grass and flowers. A giant puts one of his fingers next to me and I climb on. It lifts me onto the grass. I see my two mates fly away. 

Wow! I am all alone because the grass has a tall wood thing around it that I’m just not strong enough to fly over. Wait for me! I flap but nothing much happens. Instead I’m put back in the mesh thing and my freedom is over. The other two cocoons hatch and fly away. I find I want to climb onto that pink finger thing again - it’s fun. I move house into a big tub with sticks and rocks and flowers, and every so often I get a finger-ride out to the grass. I fly onto different flowers, but I can’t fly over the big wood thing!  

One day the giant took me from my tub, on her finger, down a road, to a different grass area that had other giants and was very, very big. As we explored I managed to fly off, but only down, and I landed in the grass. I sensed giants (with their huge feet!) all around me. I couldn’t see my special finger, I couldn’t fly off. I felt really uneasy down there. I suppose it was my fault, I should have stayed put. I heard giants talking - my giant and a new one. I’m here! Then suddenly they sounded excited. At last I was rescued from the huge green world and scooped up and taken home. 

So I stay in my tub, climbing on my friendly giant occasionally, and although my flying skills are quite deplorable, life is good.

orchard winter tree pruning 21st Feb 2020

It is half term and we have a weekday event on Friday 21st February from 10.30 am to 1 pm.
Come and join other volunteers at our orchard winter pruning event at the orchard opposite the tennis courts.
Arrive at 10.30 pm for training.
No previous skills are needed as we will show you what to do including how to check the trees, which branches to prune, how much to prune. We will also mulch  the ground under the trees - a task that children can do with parental help.
 There was a huge amount of rain from Storm Dennis last weekend (15th & 16th February) and the previous weekend from Storm Ciara so the ground is saturated. Please wear clothes that you don't mind getting muddy and waterproof shoes or wellington boots.