After a busy morning on a couple of community missions this morning, including some scything and weeding, I was kind of hoping for a nice easy gardening task in Mrs A’s front garden.

Little did I know that “Bristol City Council has asked if we can help Mrs A by cutting down the grass and nettles in her front garden” actually meant “Mrs A’s garden is completely overgrown with brambles but we thought we’d leave that as a nice surprise for you! 😉"

Fortunately, I’m quite partial to a bit of bramble bashing and, adopting the attitude of “just do what you can in the time available and forget about the rain” , I picked up one of the two pairs of shears on offer and started chopping away and wondered how far I’d get.

By the end of the task, it turns out that I’d just about made it to the fence, liberating the downstairs windows from spiky darkness on my way.

With no rake and just plastic bin bags, which wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes against the brambles, we agreed to leave the waste unbagged in the hope the council will sort that out for her - after all it’s only grass and nettles, right? 😉