The idea came to my mind for the first time a few years ago. Although not difficult to realise it took me some courage to make it happen, but then… I decided to do it and soon enough I was getting in touch with Oli, Marco, Ema, Ian, Silvio, Gianmarco as I wanted to know if they where “in” for some work together!
This time, the invite was somewhat different from the standard lunch invitation: although the aim of the event was to spend some time together I asked my friends to take working gloves and a rack as the plan was to clean the near woodland by removing some of the leaves that had fallen during fall.
And this we did! On the 09th of March at 09:00 o’clock Marco was at my door with all the tools, gloves, huge orange plastic bags and with professional gardening clothes ready to start La Grande Rastrellata!
Soon the rest of the group showed up and the rhythmic sound of the racks hitting the ground made good company to the birds announcing the first days of spring. Everyone besides Giammarco, who had an accident the day before and could not stand properly.
We decided that it would be best to start from the most deep part of the woodland and then slowly come back to the entry point while the we removed the leaves.
Marco was ultra determined and soon he was so deep into the forest that we could not see him anymore, even with his orange and yellow professional clothes. We would know that he was around only because of the noise of his furious rack. 🙂
The other working unit was made by Oli and Ema: less aggressive than Marco they preferred to chit chat while working…
Meanwhile I was struggling to keep the pace of Ian who, to my great joy, was leaving all over the place small piles of leaves which I was putting into one of the numerous orange bags. Once finished of transferring one of the piles which Ian had energetically prepared I would look around looking for some satisfaction: every time I would stop I realised that there was still so much more to do that I stopped looking around searching for satisfaction. 😀 Instead I would shout to Ian to help me picking up the leaves, instead of concentrating on the “easy” work of racking them together! 😀
I even tried to develop a personal technique to avoid flexing so much, here some pictures:
Even if all of us try to do some sport during the week, after 01:30 hours we were ready for a coffee break. The first signs of fatigue were there, but in general ,the happiness of being outdoor doing a physical job was prevailing.
Everyone was really thankful to my wife for the coffee, water and biscuits which disappeared, really, really quickly! I guess Ian was the culprit there…
After the short break we started working again. I even involved my father, who luckily was there, by asking him to prepare the grill and start grilling. I knew that everyone was concentrated in getting its own piece of woodland cleared, but I also was aware that as soon as everyone would have finished, they would discover of being hungry as wolves.
Around 13:00 we decided to stop. There still were a lot of leaves on the ground, but we already had filled all the bags we had. This also considering that Renzo had already taken and emptied some of the bags at the ecocenter.
Since we did not have any empty bag to use, we joined the rest of the family for lunch: we started with some grilled bread covered with tomato, oil and oregano (bruschette) which was amazing.
After the grilling and the lunch some of us had to leave while Oli had some more time to help me transport the big orange bags to the ecocenter. The Skoda Octavia proved itself once more: by keeping down the back seats we managed to fit four of those bags. Actually there was even more room left, most probably two more bags could have fit. I did not want to soil or scratch the interiors, therefore we decided to stay conservative: a good choice for the car, less for the whole logistic process: the ecocenter closed its doors on our nose when we were ready to drop the last two bags. Damn. Oli will never forget the frustration of not managing to 100% complete the job. 😀
Even with that small hiccup we were all happy about the day. A good change from the daily office routine. It is incredible how such an easy job as collecting leaves can have such a great impact on your mood. Of course with a group of good friends everything makes more fun!
A huge thank you for the effort and for the good mood you brought which made the whole day rock!… and as it was such a success… til next year! 🙂
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