The Keep Kilkenny Beautiful people are an indomitable lot. Less than a dozen volunteers turned out on Saturday for a well-advertised clean-up of a historic cemetery organised by the group.
Yet while "very disappointed" with the turn-out, the group's honorary secretary, Ms Elaine Bradshaw, declared the event at St John's Cemetery on the Dublin Road a success.
Volunteers removed rubbish, weeds, fallen branches and graffiti from the 17th century cemetery which was identified by the judges of last year's Tidy Towns competition as a blackspot.
"We did all we could. We didn't get through all we wanted to, but there was just a small area left at the end of the day," said Ms Bradshaw.
Coping with adversity is something to which the group, founded by the then mayor of the city, Mr Kieran Crotty, in 1993, is well accustomed.
Its current major project, for which it received a £5,000 grant from the Heritage Council, is the restoration of a fen in the Newpark area of the city which was being used as an unofficial dump. "We planted 2,000 daffodil bulbs and we got 38 blooms. The rest were pulled up," said Ms Bradshaw.
Not put off by such wanton destruction, the group will try again next year. "Who knows? We might get 60 blooms the next time." Some 250 whitethorn and 52 honeysuckle bushes were planted in the same area.
Saturday's event was organised to tie in with the end of An Taisce's national spring clean campaign, which comprised more than 2,000 clean-ups throughout the State during April.
No sooner had the volunteers, who worked from 10 a.m until 5.30 p.m, finished their endeavours than the litter bugs were back in business. "I went back at 6.30 p.m. and found three girls sitting on a headstone and throwing crisp bags away," said Ms Bradshaw. "I told them in no uncertain terms to pick them up, that we hadn't spent all day there for nothing."
A case of one step forward, two steps back, perhaps. But the members of Keep Kilkenny Beautiful remain indomitable as ever.