After years of moaning about the state of the garden we’ve finally got around to doing something.

We got a skip.

Becky and I, and an enthusiastic (likes outdoor work) and motivated (girlfriend just arrived in town from down south and she was a bit annoyed about him working today, so he was working fast) student-on-holiday-from-Otago-University (good qualification there in our opinion), filled the bin in just four and a half hours today.

There’s me:

I was about to launch into a full-on primate howl of triumph, but Becky snapped it a little early and the look on my face is more of my usual outdoors frown. (For some reason, it’s always brighter in the blue room.)

Anyway, in there are:

• a dead fridge;
• two kitchens (the one removed in 2002, and another one even older that we found behind the garden shed when we moved in);
• some stuff from the garden shed that hopefully the skip people will recycle;
• some trees (and their stumps);
• a rusty barbecue;
• lots of convolvulus and wandering willie; some blackberry;
• mega amounts of vegetative crap.

Did I mention the 96 steps all this stuff had to be taken down?