GoodGymers joined HANGOT for one of their regular summer work evenings today and soon had a sense of déjà vu. It was like they'd been at St Margaret's orchard, cutting hedges at a June work evening before 🤔.

Kash and Sevan began by refilling the water bowser at HANGOT's base. Neither had scooped water out of the canal before with buckets, but they had seen Steph do it before and remembered his technique. A few attempts later, they'd gotten the hang of it, the bowser was full and it was onto the main task of the evening.

The bushy hedges were the give away at St Margaret's orchard that brought the memories back. A wheelbarrow full of shears was waiting and Dagmar was very happy with the GoodGymers' arrival:

"Ah, we need tall people to cut the top of these hedges" - Dagmar
"I can do that" - Sevan
"...and what do the short people do?" - Kash

Well, the short people would either need to lift their arms higher or cut the sides of the hedge, so, over the course of an hour, everyone's shoulders started to ache as the hedge was returned to a manageable size.

Even the deepest, darkest corner of the orchard got some TLC. There was an area so overgrown that no one could remember reaching the opposite side of the hedge or knew what it looked like. That sounded like a great challenge for the last 10 minutes and huge branches were removed from the top level. The spiky plants held strong at chest height, repelling the chopping attacks and attempts to go deeper into the hedge. Still, the orchard was transformed in 60 minutes and was looking much neater after its summer trim.

If this sounds like fun to you, you can join us for HANGOT's next work day in July by signing up for our session on the 12th.