The late summer round-up continues this week with a Gratitude Special 🤗: delicious harvests, generous donations, mindful appreciation, a celebration of creativity and…Apple Day!
We’re also back with our ‘free nagging service’ (appreciated by many!), so please do try our mindfulness and sustainability tips to discover how keeping things simple is the often easiest way to get started.
In the meantime, feast on these golden wonders (left): courgettes, patty pans and cucumbers. Yes, cucumbers!! They’re called ‘Crystal Apples’ and we’ll be selling some at Apple Day this Saturday 🤗
So, it’s straight to the thank-yous – we have so many!
First of all, way back in May, Katy and Aysha, owners of Greeka, Acton’s beautiful houseplant shop, raised money for MindFood by dedicating 10% of their sales to us. And as if this wasn’t enough, they arrived one afternoon at the plot with loads of young veg plants for us to plant and share. So generous – so thank you!
Hamper Raffle!
In July, Antony at Coyle Dowling Real Estate put together a fabulous hamper to raffle at Trash & Treasure’s first monthly Street Food Night Market at Pitshanger’s Brentham Club. A huge thank you to In Cahoots for nominating us for the fundraiser – aka Jody and Amanda, who run these fabulous markets, and other Vintage and Artisan events besides. The next Street Food night is on 15th October 😋
Together, the two events raised over £500 for MindFood! 🙌🙌🙌
Dalefoot Composts
Next up we’d like to give a big shout out to Dalefoot Composts who kindly sent us 17 bags of their awesome Wool Compost for Vegetables and Salads, to help us give our raised beds a good feed and mulch in the months leading up to our big day ‘on set’ with the Media Trust Film Crew (see Late Summer Round-Up Part 1). Check out the second pic for another sneaky peak of our mini film (credit: Bruce Jackson, Director of Photography).
Raised Beds
At the end of August we received the incredibly generous gift of 18 giant raised beds, filled with earth and planted out with beautiful wild flowers. Plantswoman Angela Maynard, owner of Botany in East London, was commissioned by Selfridges to create a stunning display in Oxford Street to announce the seasonal opening of their Garden Centre. We were so grateful to Angela for the nomination.
On delivery day, things didn’t quite go according to plan, and we had to move the plants and 18 tonnes of earth out of the wooden cubes in order to move them into place. We were delighted (and relieved!) that our Cleveley allotment neighbours rushed to help us with wheel barrows and shovels, and in return we were able to gift them some of our new plants for their efforts.
The central pic shows MindFooder Vicky planting some of the new plants around the dome.
And a couple of weeks later, Liv Parker-Scott at Good Gym (www.goodgym.org.uk) brought a lovely team from Brompton Cycles to Cleveley to shovel all that topsoil back into the raised beds!
We were so grateful for all this support – the new raised beds make our site more accessible, allowing people to garden at standing height, taking good care of creaky knees and dodgy backs…as everyone should!
And one final thank you…
is for the amazing recognition we received at Global Action Plan’s Sustainable City Awards this Summer.
Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of our journey! 🤗🙌🙌🙌
Mindful Tip
We’ll call this one Gimme 5: Take 5 minutes at the end of the day to make a note of 5 things you are grateful for. Even if the day has been a particular struggle, you might use the time just to savour each of your senses.
Sustainable Tip
Sometimes it can feel difficult to know where to start with saving the planet! Consuming less is a good guiding principle. An important first step is to ‘take notice’ of yourself as a consumer, and to start to differentiate between what you want and what you need.
You don’t have to stop buying things you really want, and you may find you come to
appreciate them more.
Naturally Creative is Back!
While you’re savouring your senses, and discovering that less is more…now seems a good time to mention that our Naturally Creative sessions will be back next month.
MindFooders and accomplished artists, Sarah and Tincy, will be running monthly sessions online to help you reveal your creative talents.
Save the dates: 21st Oct, Nov 18th, December 16th, Jan 20th, Feb 17th and March 17th. The sessions will run in the mornings – more info to follow!
Please let Sarah know if you’d be interested in signing up. (Sarah@mindfood.org.uk)
Time to celebrate – it’s Apple Day 🍏
And just to round off, here’s an eleventh hour reminder that it’s Apple Day on Saturday 25th Sept from 12-5 (tomorrow!), celebrating a bumper harvest of apples from Horsenden Farm’s Orchard (and other local apple trees).
Please do come and visit our stall: we’ll have some produce and plants to sell, and seeds and other goodies to give away. And we’ll also be running another Guess the Weight competition, for a fabulous floral prize…
Hope you enjoyed our Summer Round-Up…now we’re all set to celebrate Autumn!
Wishing you happy, healthy times ahead,
Lucy and The MindFood Team
For all enquiries regarding any of the MindFood activities shown here, please get in touch with Lucy at info@mindfood.org.uk