Raking & Entering

For their first mission of the day, Kash and Sevan found themselves in front of an impenetrable gate. Mrs J, the owner of the gate, has a chain of key chains, each with its own bunch of keys. There may have been some logic to how they were organised. If there was, the logic wasn't able to identify the magic keys to unblock our way.

After 5 minutes, Mrs J asked if anyone could look over the gate and trellis to see if the gate was blocked from behind. Sevan climbed onto the brick wall next to it and tried to look through, but he couldn't fit his head through the gap. He thought it was clear. Next, Kash offered to jump over the gate and between the gap in the trellis on top, not knowing what was on the other side. Luckily, Mrs J soon found the right key, so no breaking and entering was needed.

Once in the very long garden, Mrs J explained that due to illness she hadn't done any maintenance since last year. Kash and Sevan found elderflower trees overgrowing the path, ivy from the neighbours' gardens climbing the fences on either side and weeds growing underfoot that went way over their heads.

The strimmer was pretty good. It cut thinner weeds with ease, even though it was only designed for grass. It struggled with the thicker weeds and old branches lying on the ground, so it was soon abandoned.

Kash set about the weeds and bushes, taking horizontal cuts, as if scooping the layers of an ice cream sundae. Sevan, without a whizzy electric tool went back to manual raking to get the weeds into big piles. There was so much to deal with, they'd agreed to leave the huge volume of cuttings to dry out and reduce in size before some people from the future would show up to bag them.

Kash and Sevan ended up with 2 bags and 3 big piles of garden waste. There was still more to cut at the back of the garden and roots to pull out, which will be a return visit for another pair of GoodGymers or Kash and Sevan's future selves.