We’ll figgy pudding out what to chop and what to leaf

It’s going to dry, it’s going to be dry!

Kate and Samia said enthusiastically in the preceding days to today’s mission. After a few deluges, we were avidly forecast checking and it looked good. And it was dry - but the morning wasn’t, which meant that it was simply too soggy to mow the lawn. But we didn’t mown about it or lose our mow-tivation and Mrs A identified several other tasks to that could be done. Kate had far too much faith in my ability to retain information though and raked leaves into a giant heap whilst I was given the mow-down of which plants to cut back, which were weeds, which to deadhead and which to take out completely. ”Should have brought a notebook”, I thought to myself and hoped that I could remember as much as possible.

We’ll fig-ure this out”

Reassured Kate, as she hit her head against the fig tree. As a guide to my memory ability, I did not learn and later also hit my head against the fig tree... I weeded, snipped back and removed the dead non-bulb plants from the pots (this bit I could remember!) whilst Kate moved on to de-leafing the borders and identifying other possible subjects for snipping. She wasn’t one for hanging around either and took the secateurs to the hanging baskets too! Whilst Kate had adopted the secateurs (or “snippers” in Canadian), I got bagging up the leaves in the gigantic bin bag. Turned out to be a two-person task and we took it in turns to be bag-holder-opener and leaf-picker.

Much to our releaf, Mrs A was very happy with our work and it seemed that our memories had served us well.

After a spot of sweeping up, pot relocating for winter shelter and furniture collapsing and storing, we carried the bags to the front and bid a fond farewell, heading off into the sunset.