Tidy Friday and #cleanplanet Litter Pick: December 21 2018

One of the many lovely things about having the young people back home from university is that my helper is around for jobs in the garden.

Today we finished a job that we started about fifteen months ago ... we finally put the refurbished decking back outside the back door.

This was how it looked at 10:59 this morning before. The rain barrel had to be emptied and cleaned, all the pots moved and the leaf debris cleared.

Here we are at 12:49, the decking laid and everything clean and tidy.

Earlier in the week, someone had dumped three black bags of rubbish at the end of the drive, where we usually put the wheelie bins and recycling bags for collection. Of course, they hadn't been taken by the waste collection services. We decided to take the bags of rubbish on our trip to the recycling centre.

Here's where the bags had been left. I've written about this house on the corner before: the freeholder started to develop it but then came the financial crash, and now he is too ill to work on it. It is very neglected and slowly deteriorating. Earlier in the year, we cut all the hedges.

The recycling centre is about two miles away and just a bit too far to walk, even with a handcart :) I save anything that needs re-cycling until we have a full car. We just about managed to squeeze in the three extra bags.

Here we are in the Leicester recycling centre with the bags ready to go in. My helper was very patient with all my requests to pose for pictures.

On the way home we went into Homebase where Christmas trees (Norway Spruce) had been reduced from £17.00 to £5.00. I have never seen them that low in price. I bought one for the house: I felt a bit sad that they had been cut and would just end in a skip without even bringing any pleasure to anyone.

The last, unexpected, job on our tidy Friday was preparing the tree and setting it up in its stand, complete with a reservoir of sugar water. Tomorrow, we'll decorate it. I also bought a cheap plastic decoration for the Christmas Cake, just to ensure we follow all the traditions.

The Guardian had an article today in its Lifestyle section about Why eating less meat is the best thing you can do for the planet in 2019.

The mighty hoofprint of farmed meat isn’t just inefficient. Deforestation to make way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertilizer use, creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the world’s cars, trucks and airplanes.

That was an interesting piece of information.

Now that you're here ... how about ...

contributing to @adollaraday's December giving target

checking @phoenixwren's Ever Green December Challenge

Image credit: @riverflows

Gardening, Shopping, Walking