Sheila and Laura joined another volunteer at Braywick Plant Nurseries. After doing a quick scout to remove any ailing plants from the sales area, we settled down to the main job of the morning - trimming the straggly petunias to stop them all getting tangled up with each other and to encourage more flowers. Several buckets of trimmings later, the plants were neat and tidy and we had earned ourselves a nice cup of tea!

Sheila and myself cycled this morning to Mrs M's to help her with some gardening, as she is no longer able to do it herself. . The back garden was overgrown and the lawn was in desperate need of mowing. Sheila wasted no time and got the lawn mower going while I got on with trimming bushes. We followed with some weeding and clearing up. There was an almost instant makeover, suddenly the garden looked more inviting and Mrs M cheered up and said she could now see herself sitting in the garden while chatting with the next door neighbour, over the fence of course!

Goodgym duty today was continuing to weed the winter heliotrope from the main bed and rockery without stepping foot on the rockery.

There was plenty of it encroaching onto the path to tackle and it was very therapeutic listening to the water from the fountain trickling and the geese and ducks quacking.

Rosie and Sol joined Sue at the community allotment for the next batch of tasks.

this time we emptied two large vegetable beds of previous soil and filled up with the fresh soil and horse manure.

Afterwards we planted tomatoes from their seed beds into larger pots.

Fluffy, the local robin, kept an eye on us, and we rewarded him with may-beetle worms. lot of protein for him.

Welfare visit for Mrs D

Sue , Maggie and Sheila were at the regular Spital Cemetery workparty, and were joined by one other volunteers. while Maggie went off to tidy some of the war graves, the others started to tackle a tangle of hawthorn and brambles that were completely obscuring one of the headstones. Much chopping later, we had a couple of hippo bags of debris, and the headstone was revealed. To help get rid of as much of the dead branches as possible, some well-aimed boots did the trick. We were delighted to find a jersey tiger moth caterpillar, which we let loose to find it's favourite food of nettles and brambles, of which there are plenty! The headstone belonged to Alfred Stevenson his wife Ellen Mary and youngest daughter Helen Mina