Hello and welcome to my blog.....

... you'll have to excuse me as I'm new to the world of blogging and writing my first post feels like a real leap into the unknown. 

So I thought it best to keep it simple. I work for Frome Town Council as the Community Projects Officer, which means that I "work with Frome communities to deliver and support socially and environmentally sustainable projects" (click here to see what we all do at FTC). In reality this means I juggle a lot of different tasks, from meeting new groups and building partnerships, giving out our FTC community grants and applying for other grants, managing projects and supporting others to manage theirs. I am writing this blog to share more widely the work that I am doing, as well as promoting all the fantastic things that go on in our vibrant town.
 
For example this morning I attended a fantastic meeting between our very own Friends of the River Frome, and the Avon Invasive Weeds Forum representative, Neil Green (check them out here, they have loads of exciting stuff going on). We were discussing the best ways to rid the whole river catchment of the invasive plant Himalayan balsam. Friends of the River Frome already do loads of work on this plant on our river, but we are all thrilled to be able to link up with Neil and his work, and to learn some lessons from other groups who are all tackling the same issues.

Here it is in the picture, isn't it beautiful? Well as pretty as it looks, it causes a lot of problems, particularly on our waterways as it spreads extremely quickly along the banks of rivers and streams. It grows fast and overshadows and out-competes our native plants. What's worse, as Neil told us today, the Himalayan balsam pollen smothers our native plant pollen, effectively blocking their ability to reproduce. It was introduced to this country a few hundred years ago, and we are now battling to keep it under control. Hopefully one day we will be able to eradicate it and claim our countryside back.

If you would like to hear more about the Himalayan balsam project, or want to get involved with some survey or balsam bashing, get in touch or visit the Friends of the River Frome website by clicking on the link here: http://fromeriverfriends.org.uk/index.php