It was freezing. Seriously. MINUS 5!!! Perfect gardening weather, no? Coining ourselves as The Sub-Zero Heroes Mission Team, we arrived at Mr P’s ready for a good old dose of arctic gardening.

Mr P was ready with the chisel for us to yank open the garage door with, which Gosia mastered. Meanwhile, Nicky made Mr P a hot cuppa and Samia had a good chinwag with him, catching up after the first mission a few weeks ago. With implements ready, we got to work in not our usual mission attire: Samia wearing The Duvet Coat, Nicky with wellies and Gosia with magical powers of being able to stay warm without looking like she’s dressed for Lapland.

We WILL find this path,

said Samia with a scary level of determination. We’d cleared the patio last time and there was no way that this path was going to stay hidden under the carpet of overgrowth that had ventured from the borders over to the paving. Possibly cowering in fear of Samia’s new-found hoeing determination, Gosia and Nicky took the wise move of clearing leaves and weeds that may block any hoeing.

The Great @GoodGymKingston Mission Hoe-down - a free total body workout with a feel-good factor helping Mr P with his garden this morning pic.twitter.com/PouIrZsF5A

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) February 3, 2019

As our toes became number, the path started to become visible and Nicky had to start to threaten some unknown plants with the secateurs (heaven forbid they may disrupt the hoeing...).

And then we found the bush plant thing with things on that we recognised. "What is this called again?", we pondered. The cat tree? Catnip? Cat willow? We found a stone cat next to it and decided we must be on the right path (in two senses now that the path was visible!) but just couldn’t remember. And then, 2 hours later, it came to mind:

CATKINS!!!

After clearing the path, removing some recycling and bagging up the victims of the Great Kingston Hoe Down, we took many photos of the newly discovered path and took much delight in being able to now see how beautiful Mr P’s garden had once been, with borders, bird feeding stands, benches.

What a difference 3 @GoodGymKingston runners can make on a frosty Sunday morning #volunteering #running pic.twitter.com/cC4K9HTnpj

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) February 3, 2019

After Samia spent a while chiselling out the mud from her trainers (thanks to Caroline for that top tip last time!), we headed indoors to chat to Mr P. We showed him photos of the work and, heard his fond memories of his wife, adventures of his daughter and his life in general. We hope that we can return again to continue the mission of all missions.