Brambles ousted; next stop vegetable garden

Elizabeth, Tracey and I spent a couple of hours working alongside the task owners, who had already done a huge amount of work last year to clear their neighbour's garden of fence-high brambles. A year on, they were looking for our help to get the garden ready to plant some fruit & veg, as the black plastic sheeting they'd had down to suppress brambles was ready to come off.

We started the day by removing the plastic sheeting & laying tarps down inside so we could move soil about without, er, soiling the carpets. Then we split into two groups - Elizabeth and Tracey did all the heavy lifting of moving two huuuuuge bags of soil & mulch from the front of the house to the garden, with countless wheelbarrow trips involved.

I stayed round the back with the task owners and pulled up weeds, binned any rubbish lying around and started the clear the thick ivy from the wall. On a lovely sunny day, a great task - hopefully we'll be back soon to see more progress!