Two GoodGymmers turned hedge-trimmers this Sunday when they paid a second visit to Mrs.R's garden. This time we were on the other side of the fence, where the branches from the bushes had grown so much they were taking up half the pavement. The whole thing was so overgrown that you could not walk up the pavement without being swept by the bushes, and had to walk in the road if you wanted to avoid it. Mrs.R is unable to prune back these herself, so; in step GoodGym!

When we arrived, we were presented with a bucket of tools that had been provided - this included one pair of shears, one pair of long-handled secateurs (that's "hedge scissors", Ria...), one big-toothed hand saw and two pairs of mouldy old leather gloves that nobody was going to wear. We soon discovered that the shears and the secateurs were the best to get the job done, and set to work at one end of the overgrown mass, lopping away until we reached the other end.

The bushes were chaos, with ivy, wild rose and evil thorn bush all growing tangled together, and forming a kind of 'branches-net' that caught every dead leaf and piece of old litter that was thrown into it. Quite a few people thanked us as we worked and called encouragement to us, so it seems the community around here has wanted this job doing for quite some time.

After 2 hours of chopping and lopping, and too many thorn scratches to count, we had cleared it all so that the fence was visible and the pavement was clear to walk down again. We now had a huge pile of thorny old branches at the side of the road to clean up!

Agreeing that bagging up these thorny branches is going to be a nightmare task, Ria discovered the communal bins - big, metal communal bins ON WHEELS!! I hear a rumble round the corner and Ria appears, pushing one of these big metal bins out to us. Heaven! We can now throw all the debris from the bushes straight into the bin, avoiding the nasty task of having to bag it all up and saving our hands from further thorn-hell.

Although the big bins made things a whole lot easier, it still took a further 45 minutes to clear all the branches away. We had to physically get into the bin and trample down the branches with our feet several times to make it all fit (remembering to apply the brakes on the bin to avoid it rolling away, GoodGymmer and all, down the steep hill...) and we filled two of those big metal bins by the end.

Throughout all this we were blessed with the company of several bright green grasshoppers (perhaps we were destroying their home, who knows?) which were not shy at all and were often found walking across our red t-shirts, up our arms or in our hair. "You've got a grasshopper on you" became a sentence often said toward the end. At least they provided inspiration for jumping up and down in the bin.

So, almost 3 hours later, scratched and thoroughly sick of secateurs ("hedge scissors!") Job Done - we bid goodbye to Mrs.R and were on our way, feeling good to have completed a job that really did need doing, not just for Mrs.R, but for the whole community.