It is just before 1000 a.m. on Friday morning, and I am sitting in Tucker Hall’s temporary, open-plan office area. My plan was to come to the Church early, take photographs of the newly planted exterior, and then write a fully illustrated blog for this week. As the great Scottish bard "Rabbie" Burns wrote long ago “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,”* and so now I’m sitting here typing whilst outside it’s raining cats and dogs* making photography impossible (okay in truth photography is possible but I’m dressed smartly for a later appointment and have no intention of getting another drenching). On the downside, no pictures of the planting but on the upside (and it is a big up) although we have had 2 to 3 days of heavy rain the campus hasn’t flooded and one useful spin off is the new trees have had a great start at getting watered in!! Let me try and describe what has been going on.
The first thing you would note on arriving at the campus is we now have a new carpark and drive through that connects N. Witchduck Rd to the Bell Tower, as well as a pull through that allows vehicles to swing off N. Witchduck Rd, drop passengers off at the Narthex entrance and then follow the loop back to the road. Carpark and drive through have a glistening covering of asphalt – which has also benefited from the cooling by heavy rainfall – and now, after so very many months, the day school drop off and collection traffic flow doesn’t have to do a “U” turn back the way they came but can now continue past the west end of the Great Hall and back to the road. Next week, weather permitting, the new carpark and road marking will be added so a great opportunity for someone to drive, or walk, through the wet, white paint and leave an indelible mark of their passing! And there’s more. Asphalt aside, the main highlight of this week must be the landscape contractor arriving on site to plant the various shrubs, bushes and trees that are part of the site plan. Most of this planting is along N. Witchduck Rd, with bushes and young trees along the curb, and two flower beds either side of the Narthex entrance that, on the right side, joins a line of “needle point” bushes planted along the Great Hall wall. If I were in the least bit botanical I would, at this point, reel off the full list of new flora, but although a Brit my gardening knowledge and talent is more in the field of heavy lifting and digging whilst under close supervision. There’s also been some plant changes between plan and reality to better reflect the locality but even so, from the construction plan I believe the trees are a mix of oak, hackberry, dogwood and pine. Anyone with even a hint of “green thumb” knows the importance of watering in new plants even when they are native to the area. This has posed a small challenge; we don’t have too many external watering points around Tucker and the one at the end of the Great Hall will not go live for a few more weeks. However, we are blessed with a commercial water faucet on the outside of Tucker Hall and after a quick user trial to confirm water availability I developed an irrigation plan based on timers, soak hoses and water sprinklers. Setting up the irrigation was not quite as I had imagined (there goes that “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men” again) because the commercial water faucet had given of its best to my user trial and now stubbornly refused to gush forth water! (a recent visit by the plumber has confirmed the need to demolish some of the wall to facilitate a repair……and that won’t be happening anytime soon). It is a very long hose-lay from Alfriend House to N. Witchduck Road and, I have to confess, a somewhat frustrating, and at times soaking, task to connect enough of ODEC’s stock of aging hoses and cracked connectors to cover the distance. But persistence prevailed, also driven by the thought of being responsible for killing off all of the new planting by week’s end if I failed to get water to where it was most needed (after an afternoon hose hauling in the sun the water was most needed down the throat of your blogging correspondent). Happy to announce the timed watering system is now fully operational and just in time to welcome the deluge of rain we’ve had for the past 3 days. I’m afraid my ripping yarn from the “do-it-yourself” handbook of irrigation is not quite done. There are 8 new trees that need much care and attention until they get established, which will apparently take about 6 weeks. Four of the trees are planted at the corners of the new car park and another four are tastefully arranged along N. Witchduck road, they are all well-spaced out making any automatic watering system impractical. Happily, for the trees, there is a water faucet behind the Historic Church and now it’s connected to another lengthy hose between Church and Witchduck Road, where it feeds another 100 feet of hose so a gang of volunteers can give the 8 adolescent trees their daily drink. It takes about 10 minutes to give each tree its watering due - nearly an hour and a half everyday for the next two weeks then every other day for another two, great thanks to the Building and Grounds commission for stepping in to lighten the watering load!!!! There’s more to report from the inside of the Narthex and Great Hall but I think I have rabbited on for quite long enough for this edition so we’ll save that for another blog and I thank you for indulging me! Would you Adam and Eve it!* Now it’s stopped raining so there goes that “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men” thing again. There shall be pictures after all but, my friends, the blog stays as written!!!! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain”: from the poem “To a Mouse” by the Robert Burns (1785). Rough, although I’m sure unnecessary, translation is: “The best-laid schemes of mice and men, Go oft awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain.” “Raining cats and dogs”: The English idiom "it is raining cats and dogs", used to describe particularly heavy rain, is of unknown etymology and is not necessarily related to the raining animals phenomenon. “Adam and Eve it”: London Cockney rhyming slang for “believe it” (Cockney is a native from the East End of London, traditionally refers to a baby born within the hearing/sound of Bow Bells). (Bow Bells are the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church, Cheapside, London EC2V 6AU, United Kingdom – rebuilt in 1666 after the original building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
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AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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