A b-rake in the weather

After a very soggy day we were delighted to find a dry-ish evening waiting for us in Queen Square with Richard leading the runners on a longer route and Richard back-marking, catching us walkers at pedestrian lights and having the shed open by the time we walkers arrived.

The massed rakes and brushes were carried to the joyous wheelbarrow park (soooo many wheelbarrows, some very useful, some very pretty and some in the middle) and into the wildlife garden where wed previously spread much woodchip. Our task was to clear the leaf fall and leave the path surfaces intact - normally pretty difficult but the rain had the leaves sticking to each other and bot the ground which, combined with our skill set, meant leaves were quickly off the paths and onto the plant beds and compost heap.

David athletically vaulted* the fence to the pond and cleared the pontoon whilst Jason mastered lifting large quantities of leaves without the help of tools.

Katie and Ed proved dab hands with the rakes, skimming the paths to make numerous leaf piles whilst Alice arrived having tracked us down with her amazing bloodhound senses.

We'd heard the ducks, seen a very big black cow (seeing only its eyes at first in the torchlight - eek) and experienced proper farmyard smells as we worked around more of the path we'd dug out a couple of years ago (or was it just last year?).

With multiple barrows of leaves moved to (hopefully!) more useful/less disruptive places, we tidied our tools back into the shed and set off back to Queen Square and on to Workout to taste test flapjacks with a huge pot of tea - perfect!

*climbed over very carefully