community-nerd

[community-nerd]

Sat 15th Apr 2023

What a day!

Cornhill Community Garden

We finally managed to level out the spots where the containers are going to go! Today was 3 and a half hours for me and I had 6 volunteers drop by at various times.

Gwyn also stopped by to give me a cup of tea and biscuits. I get spoiled by the folks who live nearby 😊

The sand is getting delivered on Friday, so I don't have to do any more work on the garden until then.

Reopen Cornhill Library Campaign

On Thursday, we heard that we have 1 week to find someone from each library area that qualifies for free legal aid in order to have our case fought for free. Otherwise, it will be £60k! 😱

We're hoping that ACC see sense and agrees to reopen the libraries instead of going legal. It would cost them more to fight the case than it would to reopen the libraries, so it's nonsensical.

Today I found a lady who agreed to be our free legal person for Cornhill. That was huge weight off my mind because I really had no idea on how I would find someone at such short notice. Hopefully we'll see some progress soon

Community Fun Day 8th May

Things are coming along with the community fun day.

The Cornhill Community Arts Space guys are meeting this week to decide what they're going to do on the day

The Triple C Cafe is going to be open for teas, coffee, and soup.

MISS, the miscarriage support charity are wanting a stall at the event

And everything is more or less set up for the litter pick.

I still need to check in with Ian to find out if the church is doing their arts and crafts and also with Hayley to see if she's still wanting to do the bake sale

Something a bit Different...

But to top off all the excitement this week, not 1, not 2, but 3 people from the local community have been invited to the Royal Garden Party at Holyrood Palace this year! All in recognition of our work in and around Cornhill.

I'm one of them along with Sharron who runs the community cafe and Ian who's the local minister.

More on this as it develops!

[community-nerd]

Wed 12th Apr 2023

Some exciting news! In recognition for our voluntary work in our local community, Sharron, Ian, and I have been invited to the Royal Garden Party! Affa funcy!

The official invites will come out in June, but it's a huge honour for our work to be recognised like this.

Cornhill Community Garden

In the meantime, I've been back at my full time 9-5 so not had much time to give to the community garden. It's also been crazy rain the past few days, so the site is far too wet anyway.

Though the solar powered generator arrived, so that's nice

I'm hoping to get some time at the weekend to finish off levelling the ground. On Friday 21st, we're expecting a delivery of sand (to be delivered by a crane!), so that will be the next group effort on the garden - sand down, slabs down, then storage containers can come in.

After storage containers are in place and built, then will start the massive job of getting all the materials and equipment moved out of storage at the school and into the containers 😱

Pray for my spine... 🙏

[community-nerd]

Sun 9th Apr 2023

Today is the first day in quite a while that I've taken a proper rest day. Although the temptation was to do some more on the community garden, I figured that tomorrow might be quite intense, so I shouldn't overdo things.

There was an interesting find in the community garden yesterday that I forgot to mention.

Martin found an old 10p coin from 1970 in the soil. I cleaned it up as best I could, though it was very rusty.

Here's a modern day 10p coin for comparison.

The old coin would have been silver, too, though I don't think any amount of cleaning will ever get it looking close to how it used to

Fun to think that someone in Cornhill might have dropped it 50 years ago

It gave me a thought about creating a Cornhill Community Museum that could showcase finds like these, people's memories, old maps of the area, any newspaper clippings, etc...

Though that's a huge project maybe for another day 😊

[community-nerd]

Sat 8th Apr 2023

2 back-to-back days of hard graft and manual labour and my body feels like it falling apart! Is it obvious that I'm usually a desk job person? 😂 Looking forward to when my body adapts to the demands of the community garden.

Cornhill Community Garden

I had another bash at the garden today after I swung by Ian's to pick up the solar generator.

Martin was there to help and we managed to get all the turf and soil that was dug up yesterday laid down to prop up the ends of where the containers will go.

We were able to make a good start on the second container site and now both bits are well on their way to being level.

A very nice Turkish lady came to say hi and brought us tea and coffee to thank us for giving the community a garden. It was really, really sweet of her!

Shortly after that, Martin went home and I stayed on site to rake over the soil in an attempt to get it to dry out faster. Overall, the site was left looking much better than when we started.

It's pretty clear that we'll need to get some sand down to get the patches as level and stable as possible in time for the containers coming in. Without a strong and flat base of sand, the paving slabs will most likely break under the prolonged weight of the containers.

I had a look online and, for the amount we need, it's almost impossible to get it delivered - too bulky for a normal delivery, not bulky enough for a bulk delivery. Of course...

So I've sent a SOS out to the committee to see if anyone with a car is able to ferry me to and from a DIY shop to get sand in time for Monday's session with the volunteers. As of yet, no one's gotten back to me.

McDonald's

After some lunch and a rest, I made a start on the poster that will go up around the community to notify them of McDonald's Planning Application. This was sent to Martin for feedback.

I also started to take a look at the documents that McDonald's had submitted in their application, but it's all a bit over my head. I'll need to spend some more time on this tomorrow to make sense of it.

There are already lots of objections on the planning portal, which is promising. Safe to say, our community is not Lovin It...

[community-nerd]

Fri 7th Apr 2023

It's almost midnight and I've just arrived home after dipping from a night out with my friends because I'm working on the community garden tomorrow and don't want to be too tired for it. Has this addiction gone too far?

Cornhill Community Garden

We - meaning a ragtag gang of local volunteers and I - broke the first ground of our community garden today.

This has been a project long in the making, coming up on 2 years since I first floated the idea of a Community Garden to the committee at Cornhill Community Association. Now, in April 2023, we're finally starting to fit the puzzle pieces together.

Most of the necessary equipment has been bought and today's endeavour was to prepare the ground for when the storage containers arrive. This means flattening it out and putting down paving slabs for a secure base.

The soil had lots of stones in it, so it took quite a while to dig it out, even with all the volunteers. We got as far as making the ground mostly level on one of the container spots, but didn't get the slabs down and didn't even make a start on the 2nd spot - those are jobs for over the weekend. More to follow.

McDonald's Planning Application

In other news, I had a meeting with a few of the community council folk about McDonald's plans to demolish Rosehill House and build a drive-thru. It's a stupid idea for many reasons and we'll be putting in our objections. It was very helpful to hear Martin's input as to how we go about animating the community and submitting information and objections to the council.

I volunteered to check some planning documents, create a poster, and do some leaflet drops, which I can hopefully do tomorrow after another stint in the community garden.

Cornhill Library Closure

With regards to the closure of Cornhill Library and the other 5 libraries, there has been little progress due to Easter holidays. Though a student from RGU made contact to get some quotes about the closures, so I'll be chatting to him next week. It's also looking like the Save Aberdeen Libraries group is going to feature in some kind of parade down Union Street at the end of the month.