Sunflowers in September

Rachel and Martin under Rachel's winning sunflower

On Saturday 8th September there was a lovely prize giving at the library for the winner of the sunflower competition and for the reading challenge. Many thanks to all those children who planted sunflowers and brightened up the library garden and to Nicola Rotton for being the garden coordinator this year and organising the planting back in March.

The prize for the tallest sunflower was a signed book by celebrated children’s author Martin Jenkins. Martin is a conservation biologist, and his books include “Ape”, “Grandma Elephant’s in Charge”, “The Emperor’s Egg”, and “Chameleons Are Cool”. He was there in person on Saturday 8^th to give out the prizes and join in the fun.

 

'Saving the little wretches"

On Thursday 26th April, Clare Mulley will be giving a talk at Rock Road Library about her biography of Eglantyne Jebb, who founded Save the Children.

All welcome 7:30 - 9pm, free admission.
Retiring collection to cover costs.

This event is organised by the Friends of Rock Road Library.

Dickens evening

Thursday 22 March 2012

An evening with Dickens....the Friends of Rock Road Library invite you to an evening with Dickens, 8pm Thursday 22 March at the Rock Road Library, presented by local actor Geoff Hales. Entry is free, donations welcome.

Christmas Cheer - 10th December 2011

Christmas Cheer....The Friends of Rock Road Library provided mince pies and hot drinks at the library today as well as running a book stall and having a festive fairy tale storytime for children. Many thanks to Catherine Bentham for taking a lead in organising this and to all those who helped out. Rock Road Library will now be closed for a week while a new self-service point is installed and the issue desk is modified....so it will be the beginning of a new chapter for the library....

The Big Draw

A BIG thank you to the  illustators Adrian Reynolds and Alexis Deacon who came to share their love of drawing with children at Rock Road Library today.

Thanks too to all the volunteers who helped made the day a success and the library staff who were so helpful.

Rock Road Library Garden in September

Thanks to the Beavers for planting sunflowers in the Rock Road Library Garden - these have produced lots of seeds to encourage more birds into the garden.

This year the trees in the garden produced a few apples for the first time. A small basket of eating apples is available in the library for people to help themselves to and hopefully there will be more next year. A bag of cooking apples were also given to Pauline the library supervisor.

Gardening with Wildlife

There was a very interesting talk at the library yesterday evening (23rd June) on Gardening with Wildlife by Neil Renwick of the RSPB. It included ideas for how to encourage more birds and wildlife into your garden e.g. don't deadhead plants (e.g. Lavender) in the autumn...if you leave them they provide a valuable food source for birds over the winter. They can then be deadheaded in February or March.

We hope to invite Neil back again in the future for a talk on another topic.

Thanks for all the genreous donations - we made nearly £100 and this is being shared between RSPB and the Friends of Rock Road Library.

Last of the apple blossom

The warm weather means that much of the apple blossom is already fading. But here are some pictures taken this morning at the library garden.

Weeding & watering in the April Sunshine

Thanks to everyone who came to help with the weeding and watering this morning in the library garden. It was a baking hot morning, but the hedge and apple trees all seem to be thriving!

Daffodils in March

Lovely to see the daffodils that the Beavers planted last October starting to bloom.

Pictures taken on 19th March 2011 - a lovely sunny spring day!

Thank you to the Beavers for weeding and planting

On Tuesday 15th March a local Beavers group - led by Oliver - helped in the Rock Road Library Garden by doing some weeding, and by planting a bed of sunflowers, corflowers and californian poppies...it will be lovely in the summer to see how many flowers bloom.

The daffodils the beavers planted last October are doing well and nearly in flower...

Many thanks for your work!

Wine tasting - Friday 4th March

Many thanks to Brenda Purkis for organising a great wine tasting on Friday. The wines were provided and introduced by Anthony of 'Hedonist Wines'. The event made approximately £200 for the Friends of Rock Road Library.

Meeting about library cuts

On Wednesday 2nd March 2011 around 100 local people attended a meeting at Rock Road Library to find out more about the review of libraries in Cambridgeshire and the implications for Rock Road Library. Christine May - Acting Head of Libraries, Archives and Information for Cambridgeshire gave a very informative talk. There is a great deal of concern that Rock Road Library may be closed. Although it is well used it is not prioritised by the Council because it is in an area which is assessed as having less need. There will be a more formal consultation meeting in early April.

From Trees to Violins...

From Trees to Violins

We had an excellent talk yesterday at Rock Road library from Juliet Barker all about the art of violin making. Many thanks to Juliet for bringing lots of tools and giving a real insight into the whole process. We now understand much more about what happens in the workshop just across the lane behind the library.

Consultation on Library Cuts

The following Summary of the planned Library Cuts has been provided by Cllr Tariq Sadiq (Labour, Coleridge Ward). Please use the comment facility to add your views about this.

The County Council has carried out a review of the Library Service as a consequence of which it has ordered a further review of Libraries in Cambridge. The main driving force behind this is cuts of 29% (£2.215m) in the Library Service Budget by 2013 and the impact on usage of the new Central Library in Cambridge. The savings target for the community library network, which includes Rock Road, is £100,000 and is described as 'Potential Library Closures'.

The Council wants to look at both 'externalising' the service (partnership with other authorities, setting up a trust for the County, or privatisation) and 'transforming' it which includes introducing more self-service technology, reducing paid staff, and increasing involvement by community volunteers. If this can be done it could prevent library closures. If not then they will consider factors such as 'library performance' and 'community need' to decide which libraries will be closed.

Thanks to Mabel for all her help watering the apple trees

...and thanks to her Dad, Christoph, for these great photos for the blog!

When the weather warms up again we'll need to make sure we water the trees regularly and keep up with the weeding.

Apple Blossom in April

Weeding morning: 24th April 2010

We made great progess yesterday weeding all the hedge plants and the apple trees and giving them plenty of water. Thanks to all those who came along to help. We also put together a compost bin which can now be used for composting the weeds and grass cuttings. We'll have more weeding mornings through the summer.