Jasmine Pettals reports: A busy meeting with thirty-four members attending. Ann, Club Chair, introduced the meeting and reminded us of arrangements for the Harvest Supper on Saturday 3 October
and also that bulbs were available (free) for entries in the Club’s class at the Spring Show.

We all noted that The Commonwealth War Graves Commission will be giving the first part of
their presentation (about their operation around the globe) at the Thursday Club on Thursday 1 October afternoon. The second part (telling us how they manage their gardens) will be delivered to the Gardens Club meeting on Monday 30 November at 7.30pm.

The next talk with be Hedges and Barriers on Monday 26 October, and will be given by The Gardens Group. All welcome, members free, guests £2.

September’s expert talk is reviewed below.

Nature’s Garden by David Boag

June introduced our speaker for the evening. David Boag is a wildlife photographer, naturalist and author.

We enjoyed a lively talk from David on the nature in our gardens. With a great array of photos to illustrate the birds, bats, spiders, pondlife and many small animals commonly found in our gardens we learnt a little of how they survive.

I was interested to hear that the most common native wild bird is the wren with more than 10 million pairs. Just two of them are active in our garden so there must be many more in the Piddle Valley. The showstopper for me was David’s photo of a white Blackbird, a rare bird indeed. I love an oxymoron too. The colour of the bird’s plumage being caused by leucism rather than albinism. I’ll keep a lookout for one of these but it could take a while, if ever. David gave us a great insight into nature to be found in our gardens and his gentle humour and effervescent style made the evening fun. Less fun was leaving the Memorial Hall for the journey home in darkness. We’re definitely well into Autumn.