Smoke Signals

Jo and I went down to the site yesterday with her petrol driven hedge clippers. She managed to cut down some of the hedges but one side was just too overgrown. We only stayed for about half an hour and agreed that we would go later in the week. Today I finished work early and met Pete to go to the allotment office to "officially" get the keys and sign the tennancy agreement. We decided since Thomas has gone away for the week on a school trip we would go straight to the allotment and burn as much of the rubbish as we could. We got there at about 4pm and I started a fire. Pete decided to rake up some of the old carpet that had been laid to suppress weeds but had disintigrated into fluff and nylon backing. As Pete found out it was a little tough!

When the fire was burning well I thought I would make a start on the part of the hedge that was too overgrown for Jo's hedge clippers. I estimate that it was well over 30 feet high, and decided that it should be cut to 5 feet, as you can imagine the branches were quite thick. Pete and I took it in turns to saw through them whilst the other used loppers to cut the limbs small enough to put onto the fire. After we had done about 6 feet of the length we decided we had earnt a drink.

We stayed until around 7pm, after burning
all the weeds we had cut down and the hedge clippings. We both agreed that we had never sweated so much in our entire life! Petes T-Shirt was pale grey when we started (check out the colour of his sleeves v the colour of his back!) We were really glad that we decided to stay so long to get the fire finished because just as we got home there was a huge thunder storm.