What roman numeral can sum up this mission? IV.

On Saturday morning, GoodGymmer's Andrew and Andreana formed the A-Team to tackle Mrs R's garden.

The bushes had grown a lot, and needed to be cut back, and there was a lot of ivy in Mrs R's garden, which, as well as tangling around all the bushes, had begun to snake its way across the ground. When you began to pull at what at first appeared to be an innocuous looking weed, reams and reams of ivy-string would follow.

Mrs R's garden also backed on to the street, and passers by had made a habit of throwing their litter over the fence, so there was a fair amount of rubbish which also had to be cleaned up.

As the garden was quite large, we tackled the main area first, weeding the lawn of stingy nettles and cutting back the hedges (making sure we left enough height to prevent any more litter-throwers!). Then Andrew took the shears and sorted out the front garden, too, which was also overgrown. He cut back hedges and weeded all the edges, then re-joined Andreana in the back garden to... well, to cut back more hedges!

Whilst pruning back the hedges and getting the crazy ivy under control, we found quite a few odd things, as Mrs R had been unable to tend the garden herself for some time following a stroke and the loss of her husband and her dog. Some discoveries included a few little plastic children's toys (dropped from the flats above, we are told), some odd bits of old scaffolding, a flat football - "There's always a ball", said Andrew. And he's right, there is! And several tennis balls, as Mrs R used to own dogs before her stroke. Her love for them was evident and she clearly missed the company of dogs. A pair of Goodgymmer's, lovely as we are, is just not the same. As a dog lover myself, I took the old tennis balls with me when we left to give them out to other, tennis ball-less dogs I meet on my dog walks. And I took the flat football home to my dog!

Once we had made the front and back gardens neat, tidy, and fit to use again, and gardened as much as possible in the hot sunshine, we were on our way. It was an absolute pleasure to meet Mrs.R, who is an amazing and interesting woman. Her strong, independent spirit filled me with admiration. It is good to know we made a difference in her garden, even if we did not totally beat the crazy ivy!

Andreana