Dear Neighbours, we hope you are keeping well and that you are looking forward to the relaxation of restrictions from Monday, May 10th.
Some of you will visiting friends and family for the first time in months. Some of you may even be going to the hairdresser. Whatever you have planned, take things one step at a time and be kind to yourself and to those you meet. Full details of the changes can be found here.
Here is an update on some of the activities we have on at present:
Tidy Districts Consultation
We will be availing of the opportunity to apply for a small grant for a Tidy Districts 2021 Consultation from DLR County Council.
The application form includes these 3 questions about our local environment:
- Overall appearance – please outline anything you’d like to highlight or any questions you may have.
- Landscaping, planting and nature – please outline anything you’d like to highlight or questions you may have.
- Litter and graffiti – please outline anything you’d like to highlight questions you may have.
Please let us know if you have any particular comments or concerns regarding the above, email: taneyarea@gmail.com
Taney Area Residents’ Association Spring Photo Competition
Photos must have a spring theme.
Max 5 entries per household.
Deadline Extended to Monday, 31st of May 2021.
Further details on our website: Spring-Photo-Competition
The rules
- Please send JPEGs/PNGs only.
- Please send us your photographs by email to taneyarea@gmail.com
- Photographs must be seasonal (i.e., clearly show they were taken in spring) and be nature related.
- The photographs do not have to have been taken in 2021.
- This competition is open to all ages and abilities and will all be judged together.
- Entries must be received by 31st of May 2021.
- All entrants must own copyright.
- All entries need to be high enough quality to be featured on our social media/website.
- By entering the competition, you are allowing us to share your photograph on our social media (you will be credited).
- By entering you are giving us use of the image with no payment.
- Photos cannot contain any recognisable people.
- By entering the competition, you are agreeing to us potentially displaying your photograph in our ‘Taney Spring photo competition 2021’ Exhibition on our website
Growing Sunflowers (Helianthus)
By: Kara Flannery
Since you have received your seeds, hopefully they will have germinated by now and the seedlings may be about 3-5 inches high.
If you haven’t planted them yet, don’t worry, you still have time, the seeds can be planted well into June.
Put a single seed in a small pot with a hole in the bottom (don’t forget the compost!). Yoghurt cartons are perfect for this.
Don’t forget to water every day.
The seedlings need to remain indoors and preferably on a sunny windowsill. It’s too cold outside at the moment.
If you placed multiple seeds in a tray or pot and the seedling are a few inches high and have 4 leaves, separate them out then make sure they are placed in individual small pots.
You need to gently pull the seedling from its base.
As the plants start to grow, you will need to put them in a bigger pot each time (probably 3 different size pots by the time they can go outside).
How you know when to move to a bigger pot is to look at the base of the pot and it you see roots sticking out, it’s time to move on.
Once the plants become tall, maybe 2ft or so, they may need staking with a bamboo stick, they tend to fall over.
Hopefully by June they can be planted out. Sunflowers, as the name suggests, love the sun and generally need full sun. Not necessarily all day.
They are happy in a big pot (about 40cm width) or plant them in a flower bed.
They should flower around July and can flower well into Autumn.
Full details on our website: Tips-on-Growing-Sunflowers
Foxes
We have had reports of fox cubs in local gardens. This is a reminder that foxes are wild animals and that dlr County Council advises the public not to feed foxes.
Further information about foxes can be found on the County Council’s website: dlrcoco recommendations for foxes
Traffic
We will be discussing traffic issues at our next committee meeting on Wednesday, June 2nd.
We have already been contacted by a number of residents regarding rat-running and other related problems.
Please contact us with any concerns you have so that we can include these in our discussions.
We are working with Roebuck Residents’ Association to bring our concerns to dlr County Council.
Goatstown Educate Together Secondary School (GETSS)
Representatives from the committee held a Zoom meeting with the Principal of GETSS Jonathan Browner on the 27th of April.
Jonathan confirmed that the school will remain on the Notre Dame site for the time being.
There is no clear timetable for any developments on the former IGB site.
We will keep in touch with Jonathan and pass on any news that hear from him.
Poem of the Week
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.