Laurel and Tardy

Five GG Yorkies had an epic afternoon destroying a huge laurel bush to help reduce antisocial behaviour in the area .

The Griffins had set up the task at Scarcroft Green, but alas, they had both been struck with the lurgy, so asked me to step in and lead. I hit a slight snag when, 50 minutes before the mission was due to start, I was still across the other side of York finishing off another epic mission - assembling two bedrooms-worth of furniture for Mrs M. I was going to be late....

I sent out an SOS to Mitch, who agreed to pick up the tools and get the party started- phew! When I arrived, the group had already made a great start and the two big sacks we'd been given for the green waste were already nearly full. All of the loppers were taken, so I grabbed a saw and joined Lindsay. We sawed off the some of the bigger branches towards the centre, so we could pull them out in huge chunks for the others to chop down in to more manageable pieces.

Is this loppable? Everything's loppable! (Mitch, as he strained to chop through one particularly mighty branch.)

Under the bush, there was a sea of litter. And under that there was even more litter. Katie and Lindsay got stuck into that while the rest of us tried to clear the growing pile of branches.

As we worked, there were plenty of people out enjoying the sunshine. It was lovely to be approached by so many members of the public who thanked us, and asked about GoodGym. One local volunteer was out litter picking. She was particularly happy to see us:

Isn't volunteering brilliant!

By 3pm (about an hour in), we decided to stop chopping and sawing bits off the bush and start clearing what we had already removed. It looked like some of the bush would live to see another day, not least because I needed to move my car by 4pm. As time ticked by, there was still a bit of tidying left to do, so I went to move the car, while the others finished off. 10 minutes later, I was back to collect the tools. Not only had the rest of the gang finished moving all of the waste into a neat pile for collection - they'd also got rid of the remainder of the laurel in record time, leaving a rather impressive stump.

Job done, Christine and Katie helped me carry the tools a short walk to their drop-off point, before we went our separate ways.