On a beautiful crisp morning, an elite subset of the Friday Club met to heft some large piles of garden debris into a freshly arrived skip. David from the council had picked the smaller skip size thinking it would do nicely, especially with only 5 signed up.

First up: a rather frozen soil & rubble patch. This needed a good mattocking to break up the surface layer (hurrah!) before it could be shifted into wheelbarrows and tipped into the skip via the patented two person lift-and-pivot method. We made short work of this and I was persuaded to stop digging it into a hole, so we could rake it over to even it out.

Moving on, we split into two teams, with Lyndsey and Claire leading project Empty The Greenhouse, mostly of large unwieldy old anti-weed sheets and wood.

Michal took charge of pile #2 with some excellent forking action, Rich focused on wheelbarrow duty (having a sore hand that prevented spade-wielding), and I alternated between the two. Before long the skip was getting very full, so Lyndsey climbed right in and did The Skip Dance to squish it all down. Even with this, it was soon full to overflowing, and we had to admit it wouldn't realistically fit any more. A quick tidy up and a sweep and it was time to head off to lunch/café/work, another job well done.

A very satisfying mission. We will be back, and next time we'll request size Large!