As part of the Go4SET project last year, a working model of the new greenhouses was made by one of our two teams to illustrate how water would be conserved in the new greenhouse. Unfortunately, this model was semi-destroyed a few months back.

Fortunately – it’s back and as good as new! Zoe Barnes (who happens to be my sister) took the model home as a ‘Christmas Project’ on Thursday and, after a lot of repairs and glue gun burns, we’d fixed it! Looking very pleased with the day’s work – here is Zoe, making the final finishing touches to the model.

The model will be displayed in the the real, full size, new greenhouses when they are completed.

Well that’s it for us. Term 2 draws to a close and with it 2009. We’ve had a super year and can’t wait to start 2010! Before term ends, however, it is traditional for our school drama department to put on a talent show. This year, I have to say, it was one of the best – particularly as it included our very own choreographed unicycling!

A big big BIG ‘thank-you’ to everyone who was involved in or came to our Orchid Celebration Evening last night. We all had great fun and hope you did to. The event was such as success that we hope to do similar ones in the future – including our new greenhouse’s grand opening ceremony next summer.

That’s right people! We’re now reaching the final stages of the ‘Orchid celebration evening’ preparations here at the Writhlington Orchid Project.  This includes tidying plants for the display stand and putting together our presentations for you on our past expeditions.

This will include a presentation from the Durban team, who’s blog you have been following on here or on the RHS Blog.  There will also be a presentation from me on the Sikkim expedition last April.  It’s looking like it’s going to be a good evening with some of our Year 8 students promising cake and biscuits!

Remember to come along on Monday 14th December (Yes, that’s next Monday!) to the school.  Bring £1 for entrance and prepare for orchids, education and refreshments!  I’ll see you there!

We’ve been having some debate recently as to whether our ‘logo’ (that you can see in the top left of this page, or on twitter if you follow us that way) could change every now and then, to add a bit of variety to the site.  Dan, who suggested it, is still adamant that playing around with photoshop is the best way to do this.  As I have next to no graphical design skill, I decided to attempt to make an equally fun version of our logo – but using A4 letters and people!

This worked well, until we realised it was raining!  Not to be defeated, however, we got out the umbrellas and have quite a good looking logo substitute if I do say so myself!

Here’s where Dan puts my efforts to shame with some flashy looking awesome graphical design thingy!

UPDATE: I’ve now uploaded the photos of us attempting to get into the beautiful formation you’ve seen above!  These include some of our practice attempts and failed photos because everyone wouldn’t stand still!