An early morning (9am!! 😵) mission in Southwark for Ms V introduced me to Girija for the first time, despite the number of times I've seen her name on run reports 🤷

Our task for the morning was to help de-weed Ms V's garden. Ms V has reduced mobility and normally has to get around using her wheelchair. Despite putting down lots of weedkiller since our last visit, she's found that you can't keep a hardy weed down, and they've since erupted out the ground, stopping her from accessing her garden.

After being greeted at the door by Ms V's friendly Bengal cat, Kahn (who was subjected to multiple photoshoots during this mission), Ms V herself, and by her great granddaughter, we went through to the garden and started work.

There was a lot of weeds (with an unmistakable sprinkle (or sting-kle?) of brambles 🙃)! After about 20 minutes or so of slog, we decided to focus our energies on one half of the garden, leaving the second half to be tackled by a later set of GoodGymmers.

Decision made, we spent a happy 80 minutes of so clearing the ground, ably assisted by Khan the cat. Aside from the various feline forays, my favourite part of the mission was the discovery of an actual mushroom growing on a tree: Not at all like the piddly little things you normally see sprouting from them, this behemoth of a fungi got its own picture to commemorate its discovery.

Both Girija and I were also really happy to be given a small present from Ms V's granddaughter part way through the mission: We each recieved a fluffy keyring that I'm sure we'll both cherish (taking mine out later for a photo, mentally I was like: "OMG! The fluff!! It's so fluffy!! And soft!!!", but I am internally dramatic).

Finishing off, Girija sprayed some weedkiller around while I took a few photos, carried some of the garden waste out to the bins area and showed Ms V the before and after photos (as she couldn't see outside properly). Ms V was very happy with our work and we wished each other a very merry weekend before heading off.

Lovely working with you, Girija. Hopefully your next mission today went equally smoothly! 😄