Tuesday 20th September
Well today was Phil’s last Tuesday and was spent at the lovely river almond. Todays tasks involved path scraping and Japanese Knotweed removal and we got to eat Fiona’s tasty cakes…..:)
Wednesday 21st September
Grey skies greeted us as we pulled up at Craiglockhart Hill on Wednesday morning after struggling through all the traffic in George St, pushed out of Princes St. because of the tram works. Our small group shivered in the autumnal morning greyness as we walked off to our places, past the small pond, the mallards and the swans and on up the hill. Our task for the day was to clean up an old curling pitch, scraping the weeds off the surface and to trim back some privet bushes surrounding the pond using our technologically advanced cutting tools as best we could. Craiglockhart hill is in the southeast of the city past George Watsons school, and consists of a small pond inhabited by some swans, mallard ducks and coots, a few crisscrossing paths and a variety of trees such as hazel, sycamore, elder and ash. And also of course a low hill. This was the area where Siegfried Sassoon the war poet spent some time convalescing and wandering through the woodland finding some inspiration in the solitude of the park. Thankfully the variety of weeds came up quite easily using a hoe and were soon being dumped in the undergrowth by the barrowload. Dave was in fine form this morning managing to entertain our new recruit Jack and organise the weeding team to best complete the job in as fast a time possible. 
Cake was enjoyed at lunchtime to celebrate/commiserate my last day and i spent most of the rest of the afternoon trimming the privet bushes with Willie, enjoying some light Scottish football related chit-chat and also enjoying the view of the swans coots and mallards frolicking about in the water.
Thursday 22nd September
Today the sun was shining as we ambled along to the River Almond for some much needed path TLC. The tasks today involved clearing out a cottage, which was swamped under leaf debris and plants growing through the stone work. This in turn led to Pat and Derek needing to remove a tree, which they did so incredibly fast! 
While they started on the tree Rob and Jack began the task of removing the debris from the floor…which kept them occupied for a considerable part of the day. Meanwhile Keith and Tom tackled a sodden part of the path, which they successfully restored to its former glory with hard work and determination. To tackle the over grow vegetation encroaching into the play park Martin and Neil got their game faces on and cut it all back in no time at all.
After lunch we regrouped to tackle the path that had been neglected and buried under years worth of fallen leaves. After sheer determination and hard work the path looked amazing and more importantly useable again, go team Thursday!! p.s. sorry for lack of photos today the camera died while out 🙁
To see photos of past and present projects please click here