Thorn to be Wild

A truly beautiful morning in Bristol as Zdeni, Nik and myself met up to give Mr V a hand in his back garden.

Great to see Nik back in the GG fold after a year out and great to catch up with him whilst Zdeni had already been with me for 2 other GG adventures today - so this was number 3 for us - and we would go on to complete number 4 this afternoon.

After a nice chat with Mr V who told us a bit about his life, he showed us through the house into the back garden which was pretty much covered with brambles and other unwanted foliage. To say it was wild would be an understatement.

It was one of those where if you were on your own you really wouldn't know where to start, whereas working as a team we were able to dive straight in (figuratively speaking)!

With only secateurs of varying effectiveness to do battle with the spiky foe, we set about our task, Nik clearing the corners, Zdeni the sides and me through the middle, chatting all the while and enjoying the warm sunshine.

Having cleared about half of the garden, the next door neighbour popped his head over the fence wondering if we'd like a hand and also the use of some more tools. In a lovely gesture he joined us, bringing with him some loppers and shears and with the extra pair of hands and more functional equipment we were soon racing through the rest of the brambles.

Nik was demonstrating his immense uprooting skills, whilst Zdeni was employing a rather nifty joint secateur and scissor approach to bramble reduction and after 2 hours we were done much to the delight of Mr V and it was great to see him appreciating the efforts of his neighbour - heartwarming stuff.

Leaving Nik to negotiate his route back home, Zdeni and I made our way over to adventure number 4 and some more brambles to get stuck into!

Lovely!