Frances and James helped Mrs R with some key gardening tasks on a fresh Saturday morning.

Mrs R has a lovely garden and backyard space. It’s spacious and very well kept. Mrs R obviously takes pride in it and normally would be able to keep things under control on her own. At the moment however she’s recovering from a fall. That’s why two GoodGym-ers assembled one Saturday morning to lend a gardening-gloved hand.

After welcoming us in and showing us our work area, Mrs R requested that we prune several rose bushes and other plants, and pull out the weeds that were trying to look all casual between the paving stones. The lawn did need a mow, however it was a wet and rainy morning so not the best conditions for this. Mrs R informed James that if he were to attempt it, he may in fact be electrocuted. We agreed this would be unhelpful.

So we got to it. It was a very brisk morning so that gave us even more motivation to, quite literally, get chopping.

Frances started out with the clippers, pruning the bushes around the edge of the garden. James meanwhile got up close and personal with the weeds between the pavers. We then switched places and like this worked methodically while chatting tangentially and sniffing periodically.

Pruning is a wonderfully paradoxical task. You cut back to encourage growth. You subtract now to add later. It does strange things to the GoodGym brain, it does. All sorts of paranoias spring forth. Are we pruning too much? Have we not pruned enough? Can thou doth prunst too much?

It was a relief that when Mrs R came to check how we were doing, instead of being shocked at how much we’d cut away of her beloved rose bushes, she said they could even use a little bit more cutting back. Phew. We can do that!

We put the finishing touches on our task, cleaned up and binned the cuttings, then left a happy Mrs R to enjoy the rest of her Saturday.