Lucy and I returned to visit Ms J today. Two weeks ago we moved an old fridge freezer from the back of her house to the front from where the council will remove it. While we were there Ms J bemoaned the likely high cost of clearing lots of weeds from her garden and was amazed to hear that this was something that GoodGym could help with. Sure enough the request was logged and Lucy and I were happy to oblige.

Ms J was well-prepared and the shed was full of an array of garden tools! We had a spade, a trowel, a rake, a large fork, a small fork, two pairs of secateurs, shears, kneeling mats, gloves, bin bags, a hooky thing and a vicious looking spiky twisty thing for digging the weeds out at the roots! Ms J also provided us with bottles of water - very welcome as it turned out to be a warm day and quite a work out!

Despite the equipment, it was a difficult task. There were lots of briers growing through other plants that Ms J wanted to keep. There were also plastic sheets underneath the soil (to keep the weeds down!) and gravel on top which made digging out the roots of the briers quite a challenge. I’m afraid to admit that in some places the roots beat the tools! Nevertheless I think you can see from the photos that we managed to make quite a difference in the small area of Ms J’s garden that we chose to tackle first, certainly making the path easier for her to negotiate. I think we might be invited back though to continue with other parts of the garden - keep an eye on the website for another mission request!

Huge kudos to Lucy who had another gardening mission booked across the city this afternoon on top of umpteen pieces of uni course work with a deadline to meet! Far more energy than I can muster on a Sunday afternoon!