Living Together - In Green

Living Together – In Green

Sunday, 5 October 2014

It is October the fifth. Sunday. Today everybody is making their choice. We are also making ours’. To the responsibility of citizens who are voting for their future, we are adding several very important elements – a hoe, a spade, gardening scissors, a broom, a pair of protective gloves, deserted garden, a little efforts, a lot of hope and faith that the good intentions and the sincere impulse will lead to the positive change.

We start the implementation of the second project under the program “Green Sofia” of the Capital Municipality.  

In the beginning was ….clean-up of the area. Only a half an hour had passed when five huge bags got filled up and the garbage inside them was ready to leave it’s “luxury shelter”. Yes, this lovely garden is too big luxury for it – it belongs elsewhere, not in the grass, under the pine trees or in the lush bushes.

Then follows ….the noise of the petrol chainsaw and the mower. They help us to release the trees and bushes of the choke growths and thorns. At both ends of the project area quickly grow two high hills of green forest waste, which is to go to the future composters. As if everything around slowly starts breathing more freely. 

We stick hoes in the hard, almost stone, earth and succeed to shape the first flower-beds for the flower islets. We try to clean and make visible again the initial outlines of the lawns.

Short break – slice of pizza, cup of tea …. that much one needs to continue on with refreshed power. 

Children have their children‘s tasks ….. and their children‘s tools. The pile of sand, where they love to play, eventually they form into an unexpected sand installation :). 

Around five in the afternoon we collect the traces of ourselves and we leave the place. Next Sunday we again will be here. Everybody who likes to spend their Sundays like this is welcome. We have more surprises (besides the flower islets). And what surprises may be awaiting for us….? We will see. :)

River of Flowers

Half a year later, the park presented itself in its full beauty and everybody enjoyed the blooming river of flowers.

 

Part 4 - „Living together“ in „Knyazhevska Forest” Park

It is already clear – this is one of the sunniest projects. Why? Because each one of the four main days when we have gathered the weather was sunny, sweet and warm. Normally, in this season one should also expect other states of the nature. We are thankful for this natural support!

We start at the usual time – 10.00 o’clock in the morning. We got all the necessary tools for the day. We divided us in the three different areas where we would work today,  – the compost zone, the children’s corner and the repose area.   

The outlines of the sand pool in the children’s corner are getting filled up. Bucket after bucket and wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow the sand is getting there.  

We knuckle down to work and started sewing a cover for the pool – to protect and keep the it clean when the children don’t play there.

Just next to the sand pool, small wooden poles are placed next to each other for the children to play on.   

The liveliest area is the repose area. Here the volunteers start shaping  the future “River of flowers”. First they set the outlines of the pathway that leads from two directions to the place where the bench will be installed. It is strategically located at the “spring” of the “flowers’ river”.

From there one will be able to see the blooming beauty of 400 tulips, 200 daffodils, twisted circles of daisies, aconite, flowering shrubs…a beautiful site. It is still not visible, because now the flowers are just bulbs and the shrubs are still small and have not burst into blossom. Nevertheless, even now the place looks as if caring hands touched it. Look at what it was before the start in the previous posts. 

 

While we are working a car stops and a man from the neighborhood tells us: “You need to appoint non-stop security guards here, to protect what you have done. People are vandals.” 

We strongly hope that he will not be right and we count on the humaneness in people, which alike the small flowers that will bloom, and start giving care and attention toward the already achieved development.    

Today is a special day for us. We have an inner reason to be joyful. We are in the end of the beginning, we have finalized the beginning of the new area. The base and structure for the repose area is finalized, in the Children´s Kingdom the sand pool is at place together with the first toy and the compost zone is ready to be used.

  
And the end of the beginning is good enough occasion to eat a piece of cake – all of us together!    

Read more about our development of the area in the next blog post!