Sorting food donations

Monday night is Margaret night, quite often. She’s the cheery lady we help at Rocky Park, an urban growers project. This time we encountered a severely reduced number of planters, and instead, many larger-than-usual soil bags filling the area. Our task, simple but typical, was to fork (and shovel, and spade) the high-quality soil from the remaining planters to the bags, to facilitate a more methodical arrangement of planters to which the soil can eventually be returned.

As well as a strong workout, this provided the chance to catch up with everyone’s news. Danya is still recovering from a party to celebrate the “last year of her youth”, while Louise has moved house and is currently lodging in someone’s kitchen sink (or something like that). Dan has been mixing with celebrities – he was recently chatting to no less than Basil Brush! And welcome to his first Monday night task Alejandro, who, unlike Paddington, never returned to Peru after arriving in London five years ago.

Meanwhile, another Basil joined our group picture – he’s the one wearing orange. I don't think he'll join us at the Felix Project on Saturday (https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/saturday-morning-session-at-the-felix-project-s-poplar-depot-5b0a18c7-38fd-4390-b56d-ef4bef0243da or https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/saturday-afternoon-session-at-the-felix-project-s-poplar-depot-ad18c1d2-b2e1-4c22-aea3-371481b26272, but you can..

And we’ll be back at the Cranbrook Community Centre next Monday https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/the-big-monday-night-task-november-garden-clearing-at-cranbrook-community-food-garden.

Also - don’t forget to sign up for the BIG SOCIAL on Thursday 14th https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/celebrate-goodgym.

Happy Good Gymming and Keep Pets Indoors!

This evening, the GoodGym team met in Limehouse, ready to make a difference both indoors and outdoors with Ocean Youth Connexions at the Tower Hamlets Community Transport Hub.

After a short sharp workout in neighbouring Kings Wharf park, we headed over the road for tonight’s briefing.

Our tasks tonight were to clear the outside area of leaves, and start the painting inside the new offices.

We divided into two teams and got to work.

Team Paintbrush focused on the inside, adding a fresh coat of paint to brighten up the space for everyone who uses it. The team strategically navigated high walls and low skirting boards, aiming to cover as much in the short time we were there as possible.

Outside, Team Leaf tackled a thick layer of fallen leaves, raking and bagging to make the area safer and more welcoming. They covered the entire outdoor yard area, and the minibus area, but not for long: GoodGymers blitzed after bag and bag, pausing only to head upstairs for more bin liners.

We finished in two waves (apologies for the small group photo), with Team Paintbrush waiting until every last drop of emulsion was used before gathering dust sheets and brushes and ensuring the place was left as we found it.

We all left with a great sense of accomplishment, excited to be returning on the 25th November.

Four intrepid GoodGymers joined Mags and Ash for two hours in the Rocky Park garden and made impressive work in emptying two raised beds and freeing lots of potatoes. Spades in hand, we made short work of filling numerous enormous sacks with earth. Most impressive of all was Kitty, Lucinda and Oliver managing to empty a whole bed. Well done, guys!

We were delighted to be joined by Wicket and Basil who helped keep us all entertained. We’ll be joining Mags and Ash on the Hollybush Estate on Monday, 4th November.

It was great to catch up with the cheerful Miss K this afternoon, and after a discussion covering running, the weather and remembering that the clocks go back this weekend, I headed off to her local Sainsbury's...which had undergone a shelf reshuffle and so it took me a bit longer than usual to find Miss K's regular items as a result of feeling slightly lost in the new layout.

When I came to pay at the cash taking self checkout, I had a brief "Las Vegas" moment when the machine seemed to want to empty itself of all of it's coins...even now I'm not sure how £3.70 in change resulted in me having a literal handfull of small change!

It was our October visit to the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park this evening, which is always good fun.

At our last visit in September, we'd raked hay and grass around gravestones and monuments close to the entrance of the park.

Tonight, Park Manager Ken's plan was for us to plant crocus and camassia bulbs around this area, to produce an array of colour by the Spring.

With everyone arriving close to 7pm, we were ready to head to the well stocked tool shed shortly after, to grab trowels and barrows, bulbs and gloves.

We welcomed Sal to his first GoodGym session, and grabbed head torches and lights for the ground.

Making our way to tonight's spot, Ken proceeded to tell us a little bit about the area of the park, the purpose of our planting mission and the best planting know-how.

Wasting no time, the team divided into small teams, taking care to cover the entire area, distributing both types of bulb evenly. Returning to the wheelbarrows to restock buckets and occasionally relocate to a new planting spot, as always, the time flew.

Several broken trowels - and one spectacular pun - later we were calling it a night.

Wandering back to the Soanes Centre and tool shed, we concluded it had been a handy little upper body workout, and that we're looking forward to returning later in the Autumn.

Another fun night in the borough - well done team, and a big shout-out to Lucinda for this evening's pretty awesome pun.