As usual for an August bank holiday, my parents are up from Cornwall.

My Dad was obviously a little on the bored side on Friday as, while I was at work, he attacked my back garden, cutting the grass and tidying the borders. All the sorts of things I’ve not had time to do since I got back from holiday. He also attacked the budlia. By the time I’d got home more than half of it had been “pruned.”

Well, I have had an idea to, in the future, attack the bush and remove it as it had become rather too large for the garden, about 20 foot in diameter and a similar height. This was now just an opportunity to remove it now. So, over the weekend we attacked it further and by yesterday evening the site where the bush once was contained merely a stump. However, the rest of the garden was filled with bush.

So, this morning, after taking some of the larger lumps to the tip, sorry recycling centre, we popped into B&Q and I bought a garden shredder/chipper. Well, it took us about 3 hours constant work to reduce a garden sized pile of twigs, limbs and leaves into a medium sized pile of chippings. The Mountfield shredder was definitely a good buy as it chompped through quite large bows with little difficulty… well other than one which had a knot in it, which pulled part of the chute down into cutter and took me about 20 minutes to extract. Still, the chute didn’t get damaged too greatly and it was relatively easily put back in place.

Anyway, it’s late afternoon and it’s time for a bit of a rest.