Tenby Edible Community Garden

On Monday, August 23, the volunteers at the garden, as well as doing the general tidying tasks, got busy making homes for animals to start getting the garden ready for the winter. The garden now has a beetle bucket and a hedgehog home, carefully disguised under the shrubs around the edge of the garden – can find them? If you do, please leave them there for the animals to use.

Thanks to everyone who helps to keep the garden going – there are lots of people who pop along at different times and help out, and it is much appreciated.

There is still some cut and come again lettuce and spinach to harvest. There have been a couple of runner beans and broad beans so it is worth keeping an eye out for more. There are a few baby beetroots and the potato sacks are looking hopeful. There may be a good crop of tomatoes if we have a bit of sunshine. The caterpillars have finished off the kale – hopefully they will all become lovely butterflies!

Tenby Connects is hoping to have a Vintage Fayre at the Garden in September but is having trouble tracking down the little market tents that the Chamber of Trade had to do the markets on South Parade. Does anyone have any clues? They are not stored down at the harbour! Let me know on [email protected] or 07811 359686.

Measure the Humidity

As we head into autumn, here is a way to see if the air is getting wetter or drier. Human hair gets longer in moist air, so fasten a long human hair between two points – maybe cupboard door handles, or 2 nails or drawing pins… If the humidity falls, the air gets drier and the hair will shrink and snap. If the air fills with moisture, the hair will lengthen and become loose. This means there is more humidity which generally means it is more likely to rain!

What’s my line?

This has been a television panel game in the distant past – you can still find it on YouTube! One person chooses a job or occupation, and the other players have to guess what they are. They are only allowed to ask questions which can be answered with a yes, no, perhaps or sometimes. When someone guesses correctly, they choose a job for the others to guess. If you like, you can also play this by getting the person to mime their job and the others call out suggestions like charades.

Lounge with Limpets

Limpets cling to cliffs, rocks, pools, anywhere that the tide comes over. It might seem as if they never move, but actually as the tide comes in, they go off to graze in fields of algae, using their tongue to scrape the algae off rocks. They leave a trail so they can find their way back to their favourite spot. When they reach home, they clamp down hard to the rock to seal themselves in and stop themselves from drying out when the tide goes out. If you look closely, you can find little rings etched into the rock where a limpet used to live – a home scar.

Make a list

When life feels chaotic, making a list can give us structure – and things to tick off! Sometimes we can end up with loads of things floating round in our heads, so we feel worried all the time that we have forgotten to do something important. Give your poor short-term memory a break and write a list! First just write everything down. Go through the list and cross off anything you don’t really need to do or that someone else will do anyway. Now put the smaller simpler tasks at the top so that you can cross a few things off fairly quickly. Look through the others and see if there are any that you could get someone else to do. Then put the rest in order of urgency and put a tentative date beside them for when they need to be done, or when you will have a chance to do them. Now, sit down and have a cup of tea and relax – it’s all written down and all you have to do now is not lose the piece of paper!

Wax Pictures

To do this you just need some wax crayons, white paper and a blunt pencil. Colour the paper in a thick layer of crayon. This can be all one colour or stripes or a mixture of patches of different colours, depending on the effect you are aiming for. Then use the blunt pencil – or your fingernail, to scrape away the crayon, exposing the white paper underneath to make your picture. Experiment with this – you can get very interesting effects. You could also go a bit more abstract and make patterns with other objects, such as a comb.