This morning I met up with Meg for a mission in Islington for Mr M.

Mr M has a large hedge which has become very overgrown. Some of his neighbours had started to complain about it and so he'd tried to cut it back. Unfortunately a frozen shoulder meant that he couldn't cut back too much, and so GoodGym were asked if we could help.

From the pre-mission brief, Meg and I had assumed that we would be doing some gentle hedge trimming. This was not the case. Instead, it seemed as though parts of the hedge had had an identity crisis at some point in the last decade and emerged from it resembling something closer to a tree. Branches from this tree/hedge hybrid had grown up past the second floor window, blocking some of the light. There was also a large amount of bushy undergrowth surrounding these large branches,, which made access to them difficult. Mr M asked us if we could leave as much of the bushy undergrowth as possible, and concentrate on removing the taller branches.

How to attack this task obviously required a strategizing session. The tools we had available to us were a small stepladder, some pruners, a pair of long handled secateurs, some loppers and a blunt saw.

The most readily accessible long branch was accessible from the gate leading into the property, so we decided to test out our available options using this branch first.

Plan A involved scaling the ladder, grabbing one of the taller branches, and pulling it towards us. We swiftly realised that we needed another plan of attack: the parts of the branch we could reach just weren't bendy enough to pull down.

Plan B involved stretching from the ladder with the blunt saw. However, the saw was so blunt, and the angle we had to make was so awkward, that it was difficult to make fast headway using this technique.

Moving to a new strategy, plan C was when we first started to see some hallmarks of success: we used the long handled secateurs to reach towards a higher part of the branch to cut through it. Although we couldn't get the angle to work to cut through the branch fully, this led us directly into...

Plan D, which involved using the long handled secatuers to grip onto a bendy/higher up part of the branch and to pull it towards us on the ground. This worked better than we could have imagined, as the entire branch broke off once it was bent to the right angle (presumably also a right angle). Admittedly a plastic covering of the secateurs also broke off at the same time, but this was easily fixed, and we felt triumphant at getting at least one of the long branches cut 😎✌️

While I set about cutting up our first victim, Meg assessed the rest of the hedge: there was really only one other long branch we could access without cutting back the undergrowth, and that was only a accessible through a den in the undergrowth. Thankfully, Meg was game to give it a go (I expect I would have poked myself in the eye with a branch or something if I'd tried - I'm so unobservant, I once got a nosebleed from running into a twig (it went up my nose)).

And so Meg set about cutting down the last accessible branch using a combination of the blunt saw and the secateurs. My job was to wield the ladder in the air in case the branch came down unexpectedly and we needed to deflect it away from a nearby parked car. Thankfully, my reaction skills were not needed, as even once cut through the branch required us to play tug of war with the undergrowth to remove it fully. This would be an excellent addition to the GoodGym Olympics on 3 August. It took us maybe another 5-10 minutes to extricate it.

Deciding that the rest of the high branches were simply too inaccessible using the tools that we had and our natural height, we finished by tidying up and making our goodbyes to Mr M, who called us stars for our work over the preceding 80 minutes or so (I kind of like the idea of being All Stars).

Lovely working with you, Meg: Hopefully I can make your 100th good deed in at the Islington group run on the 15th! 😄👍 (There should also be a picnic after the group run in case anyone else wants to join - details here!)