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Our April meeting really started to feel like life returning to normal, and it was particularly good to see some faces that we hadn’t seen since the start of Covid. Melanie, our President opened the meeting and reminded everyone of the Smith’s nursery and Shrewsbury trips that we have recently been on, and all the many events planned for the next month or so. Our subgroups are all busy with preparations for the Whitley Platinum Jubilee celebrations. We had some discussion about the National WI Resolution for 2022, relating to improving the diagnosis and support for Women and Girls with…

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25 members of our WI, with some friends, joined our long postponed coach trip to Shrewsbury on Wednesday 4th May. We were dropped off at the top of The Dingle/Quarry park, where a gentle downhill stroll took us the beautiful gardens (inspired by Percy Thrower who was Park Superintendent here for 28years), where we saw a wonderful display of sprint bulbs/flowers. We continued down to the River Severn and along to the ‘Sabrina’ boat, where we had pleasant refreshments and a very informative and picturesque trip along the river loop from the ‘Welsh bridge’ to the ‘English Bridge. We then…

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A group of 15 WI members had a fascinating trip around Smith’s nursery in Booth’s Lane,Lymm, already a favourite with a few of them who had already discovered this successful local family business. The father of the current owners opened the business in 1959 on a 2 acre greenfield site which has now been extended to 5 acres of glass and polytunnels. They use modern highly automated methods for sowing, transplanting, potting and growing on, with a small team of workers. There is an increasing market as a genuine local nursery open to the public, but most of the production…

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Our Positive Planet group arranged this evening for us. We split into small groups and 4 members visited each table for 15 min or so to lead a discussion on different aspects of looking after our planet. Pat showed us different potting composts, encouraging us to go for peat free options. Chris joined Kirsty from Weigh of the World in Northwich and talked about zero waste packaging. Sue explained the life cycle of the huge Bumble Bee we see in our garden at this time of year and Gill showed us environmentally friendly bathroom/cleaning products. A really informative and sociable…

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Afternoon tea party.On Wednesday 25th May, in conjunction with the garden group you are all invited to the garden of Helen’s in Brookhouse Lane. Come along anytime between 2 and 4pm to have a wander around her lovely garden and enjoy tea and biscuits.Events of the afternoon. A wildlife themed raffle. Proceeds to our WI. A photograph competition of flora and fauna around the area. Please put your entry (a standard size photograph please) in an envelope with your name on the outside. Closing date for this is the 5th May the main meeting date of the WI. Please hand…

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The theme for our group this month was ‘Painting Water’, not the easiest of topics. We had a smaller group than usual in this season of early holidays and Covid but still had a good chat, shared the work we had been doing and did some painting at the meeting. Our more experienced artists gave us some hints and tips. You can see some of our pictures below. Some are those members did at home or during our meeting. One of our members is on Art course at college and she shared some of her sketches from their life studies…

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This was the topic of a talk enjoyed by Whitley WI and friends from other local WIs on a very sunny Saturday spring afternoon. The speaker was Sam Youd, the former Head Gardener at Tatton Park. During his time at Tatton Sam has overseen many projects including the restoration of Italian and Rose gardens. However it was the restoration of the complete range of Glasshouse, Orchard and Kitchen Gardens which have proved to be popular.The complete restoration of the Japanese Garden by Sam and his team of English and Japanese Gardeners has been rated as the best restoration of a…

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Five Ladies from the craft group enjoyed a day at Creative Crafts and Sewing for Pleasure exhibition at the NEC Birmingham on March 17th. There were lots of stalls with enthusiastic demonstrators tempting us to try and ‘have a go’ We all took home a new craft to try – Marquetry, Punch needlework, Quilling, and lots of patchwork fabrics. Three of us treated ourselves to a special cutter for fine work. It was fun over lunch to find out what each of us had bought and then discuss which parts of the exhibition we were off to next. There was…

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Some of our ladies enjoy a game of scrabble, so a group of us got together in the Village Hall during March. We had a very enjoyable and sociable afternoon – not taking ourselves too seriously but ‘Scrabble Dictionaries’ proved very useful in confirming/challenging some rather obscure words! You could tell those who were regulars at Scrabble groups. Melanie brought along some Scrabble Score Cards from the 1990s – lovely to see the names of ladies who we remember from those times. We will plan our April Scrabble meeting in an evening as requested by some of our members –…

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Cider with Rosie Our Book Club had a very lively discussion about this book. We had decided to read one of the ‘classics’, with a completely different style of writing than our usual choices. All enjoyed the picture that Laurie Lee painted of childhood in a remote Cotswold village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Few of us would have read this book had it not been for ‘book club’, most of us found it difficult to get into, but most enjoyed the contrast between the world of the 1920s and our current times.…

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