Sept 2024 – Shirley Library Needs Help

The kids are about to go back to school any day now, so lets tidy up the outside as much as we can. Because you’ll see from the photos that the green is thick with bacteria laden dead mouldy grass and rubbish.

Any early start was needed as this green was big. It’s total size that needed a makeover was 300m Sq and I wanted to finish it in one day.

The weather made this extremely challenging asit was hot, super hot! It was so hot, my camera kept shutting off and I went through water like crazy.

The First Quarter

The edges of this green were a mess and the debris and dead material itself was thick, and incredibly dense.

I figured it might be easier to work on it in smaller 75mSq sections, and would make filming it easier, however, the heat had other plans.

At this stage I’m still figuring out decent camera angles and trying to remember to keep moving the camera too. Not as easy as it sounds.

After mowing the first quarter of it and getting it down to a short #3 on the mower, it was still painfully thick and dense. Mowing had down very little to suck up the crud.

I also now have 3 new bigger bins to collect the rubbish into! Thanks to Screwfix in Beckenham. (I bought them, not sponsored) Funny story about 3 Bins. Ask me in person and I’ll tell ya.

It was clear I was going to find more dangerous debris and rubbish. Once the mowing was done, I got stuck cutting the edging with the Ryobi Cordless Edger.

Once this first part was done it was clear what a poor state the grass was in because everything turned yellow. There was very little grass to see as more than half of it was rubbish.

The Second Quarter

Starting on the second quarter, things were warming up, and the sun was starting to beat me up already.

I strimmed the bollards and picked up the litter quickly, then went bigger. I got the second quarter done much faster, as I’d now found a rhythm of mowing and edging. I cut the edges and cleaned up quickly, but the edges here were huge. These were at least twelve inches out into the road and in the gutter. I had to scrape this lot off the road surface.

A local fan popped out to say hi, too, thanks Janice 🙂

The bags of rubbish from this were very heavy too.

Camera Meltdown

By the time I’d almost finished the second quarter, I hadn’t realised that the camera had overheated and had shut down ages ago. By the time I noticed, I’d moved the camera to a shady spot and started mowing in full length strips.

Oh well, move everything into the shade and take a lunch break then.

You’ll see from halfway through the video that I’m mowing long, straight lengths. This proved to be much faster and easier, too.

Thinking about it after, putting a camera up high and mowing the entire length like this in one go would have been faster, but its harder to see the other end from the GoPro footage. This is a problem I’m now experimenting with, using a 360 camera.

The next few hours were spent mowing and scarifying to remove all the debris and rubbish the mower could not remove. This went on for a few hours. You can see in the video how everything turns brown/yellow as more rubbish is removed.

Uncovering a Surprise

With all the dead material gone, an internet manhole cover was now just barely visible by its label. So it was time to move the camera and go to work uncovering this and tidying it up.

These manhole covers are critical should the internet go down, and I’m positive that finding one would have been a nightmare for an engineer, let alone getting access to it. However, it was covered in several broken beer bottles worth of green glass.

Once, I was happy that the manhole was clean and tidy; for now, it was time to recut the now scruffy grass and pick up any loose material.

Then it was time to get the remaining edging cut and finished. The heat was killing me.

Another fan stopped to say hi and chat —a lovely young lady. Then, it was back to getting things finished. This was a seriously long day but very rewarding.

Check out the video (Link below) to see the difference. It now needs four to six weeks to recover and for new grass to grow stronger.

I honestly thought I was prepared for this one. However, i quickly found out I was wrong!

Having been to the library and spoken to the library supervisor to ask permission to come in and clean it up, I checked the green space over visually.

This wasnt anywhere near enough to prepare me for what I found on the day.

A quick litter pick and mow didnt do much. Because this green space is so bad that there’s hardly any grass on it at all. It must be at least 60% or more, wrotten debris.

The scarifying is what really surprised the heck out of me! The Ryobi Cordless Scarifier really went to town on this lawn but I instantly discovered that it was pulling up incredible amounts of debris.

In under an hour I had so much mess in front of me there was no way I was ever going to complete the entire library space in one day.

It was obvious I would need to rake it all up asap before scarifying anymore.

I had intended to use the lawn mower to vacuum up all the mess and shred it, but this didnt work at all. Because I discovered weeks later that my lawnmower blade was on upside down, thus not sucking up anything at all!

That mistake cost me hours of wasted time and effort!

After an entire afternoon raking up as much as I could and bagging it all by hand, I then jumped onto the bike rack and cut the edges around it and shovelled the grass off the pavement.

The bike rack under the pavement was so well hidden I didnt even know it was there until I accidentally uncovered it.

Around 6pm a photographer friend of mine, Andrew Dunsmore of Picture Partnership in Shirley came to take some PR photo’s of what I was doing too.

Turns out it was really well overgrown and took another hour or so to uncover it all until I ran out of daylight around 7pm…

I could tell this was goiing to be at least another two visits to get this cleaned up and done. but for day one, a huge chunk taken out of it and a whole lot of damage uncovered.

Nerd Stats: 9 Bags of rubbish // 19,800 Steps // 15.4km Walked

Nerd Stats: 21 Bags of rubbish // 47,750 Steps // 37km Walked

People have asked me quite a few times now how I get rid of the rubbish… Because I’m registered with Croydon Council as a “Street Champion” (Volunteer cleaner upper), they provide me with all the bags and gloves and will take away all the rubbish.