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Tag Archives: volunteering

A Poem, Weeding and Raspberries

A friend of our son’s. Deasy Bamford, shared a poem she wrote yesterday and she has given me permission to share it with you. It touched me deeply.

by Deasy Bamford

We have volunteered a few times at The Ladder in town, painting the inside, helping with the planting of the garden at the back and today the volunteer force were called in again. There has been scaffolding up for a long, long time as the roof has been being repaired and weeds have had a field day! A whole bunch of people turned up and tidied everything up. I did one small patch and here are the before and after photos.

Before

After

We picked the last raspberries from our allotment this afternoon.

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Posted by mybeautfulthings on October 11, 2025 in allotment, community, Cornwall, environment, garden, poetry, Postaday2025, Redruth, Uncategorized

Tags: The Ladder, volunteering

Cake, Roots and Spring Blooms

20 Feb

The cake I made for Valentine’s Day last week, for the volunteers at Community Roots, has been in the freezer as we couldn’t go. It went down well this morning!

Plenty of happy volunteer workers today and lots of salads being harvested.

Happy volunteers

Salad harvesting

Just look at the onions I sowed only 3 weeks ago!

Quite late this afternoon we decided to go to the gardens at Trelissick to see how things had changed in the ten days or so since we were last there. The Magnolia over the bridge was absolutely lovely, still some buds to open. The Daffodil Walk has lots of bright, open nodding daffodils (and on one, a bee! A rather blurry photo as the wind was blowing.) We managed to find all that were advertised on the Welcome board. Click on any photo for the bigger version.

The Welcome board

Part of the Daffodil Walk

Bee

Reflection

Magnolia over the bridge

Primroses

Snowdrops

Pink path

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Posted by mybeautfulthings on February 20, 2024 in art, baking, community, Cornwall, environment, garden, nature, photography, Postaday 2024, Trelissick Gardens, Uncategorized

Tags: community roots, volunteering

Allotment – Flowers and Fun

10 Jul

We had a shared lunch at the allotment today – lots of courgettes in evidence! My muffins (recipe to come as soon as I can) were joined by Courgette Fritters and more muffins and some delicious Cinnamon rolls. I took some photos of a couple of flowers around the plot.

Chatting together we talked about travelling and learning languages and I remembered learning some IsiZulu for our volunteering in Mapoch, near Pretoria when we first retired. I made flash cards to learn with and afterwards wrote a diary of our experiences. Here is the opening paragraph of my diary and some of my flash cards.

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Posted by mybeautfulthings on July 10, 2022 in community, languages, Mapoch, nature, photography, Postaday2022, South Africa, travel, Voluntouring, Words

Tags: IsiZulu, volunteering

Weekly Photo Challenge – Inside

17 Sep

This is one of my favourite “Inside” photos. It shows the contents of the case that I took to South Africa when we went volunteering in a village called Mapoch. The stacking cups and the wooden beads were toys which our own children had played with many years ago.

Inside my case

The subsequent photos show some of the toys we took being played with by the children in the pre-school. We went to help build an extra classroom and to work with the teacher and the children. It remains one of the best things I have ever done. The village and the people will be a part of me forever.

Sadly I lost all my photos from the trip but I did keep a diary so these photos are from the diary and are therefore not the best quality.

Children playing

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/photo-challenge-inside/

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Posted by mybeautfulthings on September 17, 2013 in Beauty, charity, Mapoch, photography, Postaday2013, South Africa, travel, Voluntouring, Weekly photo challenge

Tags: volunteering, Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

Playground Sounds, Delicate Daffodil and Birthday Skype

12 Mar

1 Walking into town about lunchtime today, I was delighted to hear the sounds of the nearby primary school children at play – such happy squeals and shrieks and laughter, sounds that we have heard all our working lives and since, in our travels around the world. All children at play, wherever they are, make the same happy sounds and we heard it in Mapoch, South Africa where we went to build a classroom the year after we retired.

Children on the climbing frame in Mapoch

2 I love the yellowness of this time of year but I also find the delicacy of this pale daffodil very beautiful. The specialness of this daffodil is for two very good friends who have each lost a parent in the last couple of weeks. This is just to tell them they are loved.

Pale daffodil

3 We Skyped with T for her 2nd birthday today as she opened her presents. How lucky we are with current technology that allows us to share such events from hundreds of miles away.

For those who would like the Nutella Cookies recipe, I’ve put it on my Recipe pages today. Enjoy!

16 Comments

Posted by mybeautfulthings on March 12, 2013 in charity, Children, community, family, flowers, garden, Grandchildren, Mapoch, nature, photography, Postaday2013, travel, Uncategorized, Voluntouring

Tags: bereavement, happy children, love, Mapoch, Nutella Cookies, photography, playground, Postaday, postaday 2013, South Africa, volunteering, Voluntouring

Elephants, Embroidery and ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!’

14 May

1 I love elephants! I’ve loved them since I was very little and today this beautiful story came in to my inbox and reminded me of our encounter with a herd of elephants after our Voluntouring in Mapoch, South Africa. The lovely Mr S spotted them from a long way away, we found them and watched them playing in the water for about 40 minutes. It was absolutely magical.

http://delightmakers.com/news-bleat/wild-elephants-gather-inexplicably-mourn-death-of-elephant-whisperer/#.T7AQOKty_Jo.facebook

Elephants enjoying the water

Leaving the water

Teenage elephant, reluctant to leave his playing

Mother and Baby

2 This beautiful embroidery is one of three made for me by Grace, the sister of the teacher at the school in Mapoch, near Pretoria where we, with local builders, built a classroom.

Grace’s beautiful embroidery

Sisters under the skin, Grace, me and Sibongile and their babies

3 We’ve hardly stopped laughing all evening! We’ve been to see ‘Spamalot’ at The Hall for Cornwall. The place was packed and the whole audience loved the show.

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Posted by mybeautfulthings on May 14, 2012 in animals, art, charity, comedy, craft, embroidery, Hall for Cornwall, Mapoch, nature, South Africa, theatre, travel, Voluntouring

Tags: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, community, elephants, embroidery, Hall for Cornwall, herd of elephants, laughing, local builders, Mr S, sister, South Africa, Spamalot, teacher, volunteering, Voluntouring

Tickets, Mapoch and Baby Naming

09 Jan

1 We’ve booked our flights to Senegal for Daniel and Ami’s wedding!

2 Fabulous singing with the Inglehearts tonight and a super offer from the husband of a choir member. His firm have offered to sponsor the sending to Mapoch of all the balls I’ve collected from friends. I’ve been collecting balls from deodorant roll-ons and plastic rolls from printers since Mr S and I did our volunteering in 2007 (building a classroom) and sending them all out to the Gogos (Grannies) who bead them into the most beautiful decorations.

Beadwork by the Gogos of Mapoch, S.A.

This year no new volunteers were able to take them out for me as people have done in the past and they were going to cost about £90 to post! Consequently I only sent a few and the lovely people who’ve been collecting were very disappointed. Thanks to P, it seems as if all the rest might be able to be sent – brilliant!

3 I’ve been booked for a Baby Naming Ceremony in July! Delighted! They are such lovely individual ceremonies to do.