Myself, Egg and Jenna met Liz, the Volunteer Co-ordinator, at Brunswick Organic Nursery on a lovely mild and sunny afternoon. We had 2 tasks, 1 of which Jenna had made a start on as she had arrived very early ('Log Jenga' - more on that later). However, Liz really wanted us to get stuck into moving the mound of hardcore onto the pickup truck that was next to the mound (and a little bit on it as well). At first glance the pile looked quite small compared to those we have tackled at GG York in the past, however we soon realised it takes a LOT longer when there are only 3 of you.

We got stuck in with a choice of traditionally shaped shovels (ie rectangular) or some pointed shovels (new to us at GG York). I had a go with a pointed one but discovered that the very long handle was not ideal in a confined space as I almost poked Egg in the eye several times. We took turns with 1 of us up on the truck sweeping and shovelling the hardcore across the bed of the truck so that it was evenly spread. Once we were 3/4 of the way down the pile it was all hands on deck (well, the ground) to shovel the last bits onto the truck, scooping the larger bits with our hands. After about an hour we were finished; we had even managed to scrape the hardcore from around the tyre of the truck and from underneath the hedge.

We then moved on to our next task which we named Log Jenga or to be more precise Log Jenna-ga. There was a large crate of logs which needed putting into the log store opposite. It was a bit like dry stone walling (although none of us have ever done that either) in that we had to stack the logs (all of varying shapes and sizes, some round, some wedge-shaped and some flat) 3 deep in some sort of orderly fashion. It was great fun and we enjoyed building our wall of logs, even though we had to really reach to get the ones at the bottom of the crate (we almost sent Egg in as she loves to jump into stuff but luckily she wasn't needed).

Liz was very grateful for our help, saving them hours of work and I'm sure we will be back to help them out again.