It was the summer of snakey vines

Sunday afternoon, and time for a mission with Anna and Beth in Southwark.

Today, we were helping to clear Ms B's garden: She's found that it's become very overgrown this summer, after her decreasing mobility has meant that she's been unable to keep up with keeping it clear. South London Cares, one of our partner organisations, asked if we could help out with this.

All three of us turned up at Ms B's at 1pm feeling less like a puddle and more like a hot tub. However, we were all very much looking forward to gardening in a nice, balmy, sheltered garden 😎

Our dreams were not to be 😓

After saying hello to Ms B and collecting some gardening tools from a communal green space, we went through to the rear garden.

It was very sunny 😬 (Saying more than that cannot possibly describe the searing heat we were working it, so let's leave it at that.)

Luckily the clearing task went by quickly (maybe 75 minutes in total). Part of this was because there were three of us. Another part was because a lot of the green stuff being cleared (both from the floor (pictured) and from the gates (not pictured)) was vine-like, and so liked to clump together whenever you pulled one of their friends away. This made for very efficient clearing ✌️ Of course, you had some sneaky vines on the fence that snaked their way in and out of the metallic grid forming the fence. These snakey vines cleaved to their metal home more than to their breathren (they were materialistic vines), but could be removed with pure persistence (and, occasionally, height).

Finishing up, we took around 7 bags of green waste to the bins and made our goodbyes to both Ms B and each other.

Great working with you guys - have a fun bank holiday weekend!