Myself, Christine and Max met on a cold and breezy but sunny Sunday morning at Mr R's. He'd had some help from GG in the summer but his garden was full of weeds again as he isn't able to keep on top of things due to health problems.

After a bit of a chat we set to work tackling the weeds with various tools provided by Mr R and my ever useful 'Griffin Claw'. I took on the digging mainly to keep warm! Unfortunately the rain returned and we got a bit wet but luckily it was short-lived. It was backbreaking work but thankfully the soil was lovely and most of the weeds were easy to pull out - much to Christine's delight. Some of the more rooty weeds (dandelions and mare's tail) needed a good dig down with the fork to get all the roots out but we think we managed it! I was particularly pleased with one impressive ball of roots that came out so we kept it to one side to photograph later.

Me and Christine managed to clear about 2 thirds of the large area and Max cleared a smaller patch and got rid of the weeds inbetween the slabs, making the garden look a whole lot better.

Mr R is a lovely chap and offered us hot drinks and Tunnocks tea cakes plus Digestive biscuits. He also gave me some of the mushrooms that his kind neighbour had given him and he wouldn't let us leave without some chocolates (he really did insist that we took them) so we said we would bring them to the group run tomorrow. Barbara took custody of the chocolates as she was cycling rather than running (big cheer to Christine for first time running to a mission) BUT.... maybe my alter ego "BadGym Babs" might just "forget" to bring the chocolates to the group run after all ..... I do love a bit of Quality Street!

After an hour and a half, with aching backs, tea drunk and snacks eaten, it was time to leave, but not until Mr R had told us all about meeting Sean Connery!

With our shoes clogged full of soil, we headed off in different directions to enjoy the rest of our weekend.