Rake and it'll roll!

A group of us met with Kristina again from York City Council behind a block of garages in Acomb. To our delight she had brought lots of tools including brand new shears and extendable loppers. Our task was to clear the back corner of greenery and smaller branches and clear debris from the ground. We were joined by Aron who we haven't seen in a while now he's emigrated to Leeds. Great to see you again Aron!

Our group soon got stuck into our tasks with much snipping, lopping, sawing, dragging and sweeping. Egg was on ground clearing duty whilst several of us got attacked by some quite thick brambles that had grown right up into the trees.

They look like spikey cucumbers - I said.
I'm not coming to your house for salad! - Ed

Even though they had been cut they resisted as they were so tangled but Vicky was not to be deterred and managed to pull down some sizeable branches and brambles without actually hitting anybody on the head (I'm sure)! I came up with the great idea of pulling the huge pile of cuttings/spiky brambles onto the flattened bags so we could drag it across to the dumping place. Ed was not convinced however and was soon proved right as he just ended up with a bag in his hand and the pile still where it was! We then just pulled the big pile across - simples!

I showed Vicky the "rake and roll" technique I've used on previous GG tasks, where basically you use the rake to roll the big pile of weeds/brambles to where you need them to go. The rolling action helps to keep everything together to avoid bits getting left behind. Lizzie then got stuck in helping me roll the piles across, before most of us helped with sweeping the newly discovered slabs. The very wide brooms were very effective.

After an hour some of us had to leave so we had a quick group photo in front of the transformed area and then left the rest continuing to tidy up for the last 10 minutes before some of them went on to the next mission!