On a grey Sunday morning, the Friends of Princes Park carried out some tasks in a safe, socially distanced manner in the beautiful surroundings of the Victorian era park.

First up was raking, piling up high and then transporting fallen leaves to the leaf cage. As well as clearing the paths of slippy leaves for runners, walkers and cyclists, the local worm population will be getting to work transforming this veritable bounty of biomatter into mulch for the volunteers to use on young saplings in the months to come.

In Blue Peter style - 'Here's one I made earlier' - a large pile of matured mulch ready for action was moved from a centrally stored spot to various areas around the 'roly-poly', a naturally formed half pipe surrounding by copses, where it will shortly be put to good use. This had frozen over in the cold conditions and so some extra work was required to crack into the top layer!

Although larger volunteer group activities are off the agenda for now, by creating smaller and more manageable tasks individuals will be encouraged to come down by themselves or in their social bubbles to ensure the park is maintained over the upcoming weeks and the trees continue to thrive.

And finally - once the thick leaf carpet was removed, the first bulbs of the year were visibly poking through the ground.... a timely reminder that, like the current lockdown, winter will pass and a bright Spring is just around the corner.