Steve and I met in Islington on a hot Sunday morning to get September off to a good start with a mission. We had taken different approaches to getting there, bus and walk for me and a hot 3K run for Steve which may have explained why he appeared to be doing a flamingo impression when I arrived.

On our way out to the garden as well as talking about what needed doing we discovered that Steve and Ms M’s granddaughter are birthday buddies, sharing a birthday this coming Friday.

Once in the garden we could see that it needed a bit of TLC and our job was to pull everything out. The bags we were given may have been the biggest we had ever seen but they were also wafer thin, making them no match for the brambles that filled the garden. Opting for the make a nice neat pile instead approach we spent an hour or so pulling up nettles, chopping back brambles, rearranging old building materials and raking up long grass. The resident robin kept an eye on us while we worked and will certainly enjoy all the creepy crawlies that we unearthed. Once we’d pretty much got rid of everything green we said our goodbyes, and happy birthdays, and headed round the corner for a well-earned lunch/second breakfast.