To add to my good mood from today’s sun, this morning I met up with Abi and Graham for a gardening mission for Ms A. Graham was last to join our coven, although he initially ran past Abi and I so that he could get his measured Strava run up to a round number! Ah, the energy of youth! 🏃

After introducing ourselves to Ms A, she explained to us exactly what needed doing in the garden. Essentially, a contractor earlier in the year had pierced some holes in the tarpaulin underneath some gravel in her front yard, which had resulted in some weeds taking advantage of the opportunity to run rampant. She requested that we pull up as many of those weeds as possible in the time available and to cut back an old rose bush.

And so we set to it, chatting as we did so. Initially, we all started with the weeding. After a while, I contemplated having a go at hacking the rose bush (I’d watched a YouTube video on how to prune a couple of months ago, so I’m obviously now an expert). Thankfully Graham tackled this job before I could. As he started it, Abi noted that he was using pound store secateurs (enough GoodGym will enable you to spot them at a distance). She instead proffered a better pair for the job. The satisfaction in Graham’s voice at the first cut with these second secateurs made it obvious that this was a good shout on Abi’s part.

Overall, we had a fun time: I had fun amazing everyone with the eclectic (but useful!) items in my big bag of wonders (although I will admit that I had less fun realising by exactly how much I was the crone of the group 👵). I think that Graham and Abi had fun bonding over the usefulness of statistics 📈 and spreadsheets, whereas I know that Graham had fun trying to balance in a bag full of weeds and that Abi had fun rescuing random wildlife found in the garden. Occasionally, we saw a dog (multiple dogs, single instances), which is always a big mood boost.

Finishing up after a couple of hours, we showed Ms A our handiwork and she was pleased to see the difference we’d made in the time available. Although we obviously couldn't weed everything that time, we'd made it look a lot neater for her until the tarpaulin can be sorted properly. We chatted with her for a few minutes about what she’s going to do with her garden over the next few months, before making our goodbyes. Another successful GoodGym mission! 😄