A Brush With The Claw

Another trip down the Malago Greenway today to continue our work with the Malago Greenway Berry Maze volunteer group who are making real progress with the development of a maze that will be made out of 16 different varieties of berry plants.

We've played a big part in this project so far, helping to clear the location of rocks and roots, spreading mulch and gravel over the paths, and today was designed to be the last tidy up of the area before the berries get planted (or should that be berried?) as well as helping to paint the giant slab to the lovely design prepared by Harry, a young student at the local primary school.

There were eight of us on hand to, er, lend a hand today, including Vanessa, who had packed her bag for all eventualities, but definitely had all the bases covered when in came to the painting task ahead. Also joining us for the first time was Krysia, who decided to cycle over to the site - thanks for coming along and getting stuck in Krysia!

Arriving at the site we were greeted by the a-maze-ing Raluca, who has guided us through the project all the way, and her team of volunteers, who were already well entrenched with the tidy up operation. We were thrilled to meet Ollie, who was in charge of the painting operation and young Harry himself who was keeping an eye on the detail, to make sure that his vision was being realised down to the last detail.

With this in mind, we selected our best painting team for the task - Caroline, Maria, Vanessa and Krysia all rising to the challenge and arming themselves with paint brushes and some very gloopy looking and very colourful paint. And off they went with steady hands and careful application, under the watchful eye of Harry.

Meanwhile, David got to work with a spade and unearthed more bricks, rocks and roots - I'm sure someone is replanting them overnight! - whilst Richard and Liam cultivated the land between the pathways with an awesome tool called a cultivator - like a long broom handle with a three pronged claw on the end. This is now officially Liam's favourite gardening tool. With me raking these patches to try and level them out the beds were really starting to look tidy by the time we were done.

Just time for Richard, Liam and myself to shift some more mulch onto the pathways (well you can never have too much mulch can you?), whilst David just went on digging (he was certainly digging it today)!

Over at the the giant slab, the girls were doing a lovely job (certainly no complaints from Harry there) and it was a real struggle to get them to down their brushes when it was time to leave - however, tempting them with cake, falafel wraps and quesadilla just about seemed to the trick and we were off on our way again.

The site is really starting to look brilliant and even with a smaller group today we were able to make a big difference - it's so good to see how this is turning out.

Thanks all for coming today and to David for backmarking once again.

There's a group run as usual on Tuesday and the chance to do a back to back double deed next Saturday. Yay!