Just after Katie and Alex’s WedRun in Tooting (all the best for happy couple!), Frances and Gosia made their way to Croydon to tidy up garden for Mrs Shirley. She had a visit from some GG runners last week who made a great start on transforming her garden, now asked for help of a couple more runners to come back and complete the job.

The weather was definitely not the best – it was cloudy and raining quite heavily since early morning. Mrs S was almost sure that we won’t come, but what could possibly stop us?!. She greeted us very warmly and briefly explained what we could help with. At the beginning, we have visited backyard but it was already in a pretty good shape (well done last week’s runners!) so we were asked to do some tidy up to the front garden. Mrs S offered us an access to a full range of gardening tools (this always makes one happy), so we picked two brooms and a rake and started sweeping up the leaves. Some of them were squeezed in a metal fence or well hidden under the bushes and plants but we have managed to get most of them out. Eventually – we collected all the piles and put them into black bin bags.

As we still had some time we grabbed pairs of gloves and started de-weeding and more generally clearing up the space in the garden and its surroundings (yes - Gosia still have problems in identifying which of the greeny inhabitants should be classified as a plant or a weed). Using a trowler (very beautiful patterned one!) we also started scrapping a layer of moss covering a concrete step in the middle of the garden. It’s was quite a timeconsuming task and would need another 1-2 hours to get rid of it all but even clearing some space made a significant difference.

Mrs was thankful for the help and insisted to stay for a tea or any hot drink. We were both really soaked and tired though so kindly declined the invitation and headed back. So good, that in the meantime it stopped raining!