It was definitely feeling a lot more like Christmas this morning as I made my way to Brent for a gardening mission with fellow chickadee, Sylvia (in short, it was cold 😣).

For today's task, we were to help tidy the lovely Mrs P's garden. Mrs P has some knee problems and spends a lot of her time caring for her husband. This means that she hasn't been able to do as much around her home as she's used to. Having lived there for more than 55 years, she's extremely house proud would like to see it kept in a good condition ☺️

As soon as we arrived, Mrs P offered us some tea, which she'd boiled together in a saucepan with some milk and mint (apparently this is a form of bush tea). We definitely appreciated the hot drink and loved how the mint added to the flavour. Truly a top (PG) tip to take away from our mission :)

After a natter over the tea, we started on the garden before the rain came. Our main jobs were to move some pots from one side of the garden to another, to do some general weeding, and to move some paving slabs to the edges of the garden.

Sylvia got started with the pots while I got down and dirty with the weeds. Suddenly, Sylvia yelled out to me, "Look!!!". We'd been joined by a friendly robin! Our host informed us had the robin (named Ruby) is a frequent visitor to the garden whenever she's gardening. We tried hard, but not being Disney princesses, our dulcet tones didn't lure her any nearer: only the possibility of worms seemed to motivate her to flit closer, a world view that baffles me 🤯

As rain was forecast, Mrs P took us off weeding and on to moving paving slabs to the edges of the garden. We were temporarily delayed in this endeavour by the appearance of several large spiders who wouldn't look out of place in a body building competition. They were of a mind to disappear into the ether (or the earth) relatively soon after discovery though, which helped our progress enormously 👍

We may also have attempted to use a small hatchet to chop some mortar off one of the paving slabs pre-move, but after the axe head came off mid-chop, we decided it was probably not the best of ideas 😅 However, it did give Ruby something to perch on and, come spring time, I'm sure it can be turned into part of a rockery ;)

Our last job for the day was to fork up some roots and flatten the ground for Mrs P, making it safer for her to move around her garden (& gain access to her home grown onions and garlic!)

Jobs done, we made our goodbyes to Mrs P, who said that she would request us especially for a return mission in the spring. Hopefully we can make this happen, as I'm very keen to try her tea again! 😄