Shopping trip for a very grateful Mr O.

Fantastic Friday Farm Frolics

Edges edged, raking raked, chatting chatted.

More January to get through but lucky for us we have GoodGym Bristol to see us through - hopefully the only Group Run of the month with an outside task and the weather was KIND!

We were tasked with beautifying (OK, clearing the litter from) the areas around Redcliffe Nursery School/Children's Centre which gets a lorra litter (in a Cilla Black voice). We were only challenged by one local but mainly he was seeing if we were looking for a cat. No riot Police at all this time.

Working around the school, we also reported the flytip that Bristol Waste have since said is on private land (despite being at the back of the school, an emergency exit from the Council tower block and just off the road), excitingly across the Banana Bridge (sooo yellow (in a Sinita voice)) and tidily along the side of the river, finally finding Frances.

One more pile of flytip reported, we tied up the bags, stashed the litter-picking kit, washed our hands and headed for burgers at Three Brothers, lovely as always with the addition of a game of Mayo Top Trumps and league table of scores from the NHS Healthy Choices quiz which goes to show that 10/10 is achievable!

Fabulous progress in the Battle of the Bramble at Brunswick with Mark joining for his first visit.

Knowing his prowess with a saw at Ashton Court, he set to on a mahonia and buddleia to reduce the height and dragged his “clippings” to the growing pile of green waste for the gardeners to collect.

We also made progress on paths, de-butter cupping and chopping back some of the smaller tall grasses.

2026 is looking good in the cemetery!

There was chopping-a-plenty to clear autumn chopping back in time for the Morris Dancers at next week’s Wassail - twigs chopped into bags and big branches saved for a future dead hedge.

It’s a site we’ve helped at before and great to see the community making good use of the space with plans for making it even better for nature as well as locals.

With chopping, raking, brushing and lifting it was a good workout for us an we’re invited to the Wassail next week - win/win!

A cold start to the day, but things had warmed up a bit by the time Frances and Paul arrived at the task. Rich and Janka arrived shortly after, having come from the Northern Slopes mission a little earlier.

We raked away any grass cuttings allowing for the light to get through and disturbing the top level of soil. Hopefully the wildflowers should get off to a good start.

Plenty of people passed us walking their dogs so we left the gift of a tempting looking stick that we found - not tempting enough apparently.

At the end there was time a glass of the latest batch of Manor Woods apple juice and the very last of the Christmas biscuits and mince pies - thanks Martin!