On a cold sunny Sunday morning, 4 Good Gymers descended on Florence Green in New Cross. The volunteers there needed help developing the space and Good Gym were soon put to work digging trenches ahead of future planting of new hedgerows, and equally importantly clearing away mud and dug-up grass to prevent the remaining grass from dying. Before you knew it the work was done and we were rewarded with tea and biscuits. This is a lovely task that will need help for a while so look out for future sessions.

Under cloudless skies and with the temperature approaching 30 degrees, I gave the grass in Ms M’s back garden a quick trim with the mower then loaded the clippings into her brown bin for composting – before retreating back into the shade! When I left to collect my bike, I also pulled up a few weeds from the driveway and had a chat with Ms M while admiring her sweet pea plants. Once this latest spell of extreme weather passes, she'll be able to enjoy her outside space knowing everything is neat and tidy.

A group of a dozen or so comprised of local volunteers, children and a couple of good-gymers ferrying water up and down a parched hedgrow with buckets and watering cans.

We only had enough water in the container for half the thirsty sapling which had been struggling in the dry weather, but managed to water them all with the use of a piece of string, a metal bucket and the Ravensbourne.

300 shrubs later and with tired arms the hedge will have a chance to get through another few days of hot weather, and I suspect we will be back soon.

Lovely day for it. Good fun. Apologies I’m great at remembering to take photos!

There really wasn't that much litter along the Ravensbourne in Deptford's Brookmill Park this week, it would probably have fitted in one of the carrier bags I picked up. But I used the time to destroy another large clump of very invasive Himalayan Balsam whose root structure destroys river banks.

Mr J was adamant that I’d be able to find gorikayi, aka dried guar beans, in one of the shops on Deptford High Street. Alas, there was no success.
On the plus side everything else on the list was available and more importantly, he was back to his normal self as Mrs J came out of hospital yesterday.

A very standard shop for Ms Y today which was much cheaper than she had expected in our game show based Paul’s Price is Right (an amalgam of Bruce Forsyth based game shows). I did make it harder by not telling her which items the Co-Op had members’ offers on.