Falmer

FLOWER FESTIVAL: The weather for last weekend's flower festival could have been better and competition from the Race for Life event in Stanmer Park affected visitor numbers. The comments on the flowers in St Laurence, showed that our flower loving visitors were impressed with the arrangements. Angela Stannard had surpassed herself in the decorations that were placed around the church and the competition arrangements were delightful and imaginative. The winning arrangement was Jenny Batley with her interpretation of The Great British Bake Off, second place went to Sue Barnes for Shakespeare on the BBC and third place was awarded to Angela Walker for another take on Great British Bake Off. Many of our flower festival visitors come back year after year, and I was delighted that people who had bought plants from us last year were so pleased with their purchases that they had come back for more.

SUNDAY TEAS: The flower festival may be over but Sunday afternoon village teas continue until September and some of the plants that were for sale will be available too.

BIRDLIFE: I was very surprised last Monday to see three herons fishing together on the pond, one large one and two slightly smaller. I have only ever seen single herons before this. I read that they will take small animals and other birds as well as fish, so I am hoping that the quaint little group of ducklings that turned up on the pond recently will manage to grow into ducks. I think they have lost one of their number but they are growing all the time and they stick together in a group for safety. I arrived at the village hall in my car on Saturday morning and started unloading the things for my stall and realised the ducklings were following me, fortunately they couldn’t manage the step so we didn’t end up with a lot of small birds running around under our feet.

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