Last night our trusty crew tackled a truly rewarding task, proving once again that a little sweat and a lot of smiles can make a big difference. Our mission after running to the Methodist Church was to extract the sunflower seeds from the flower heads, retrieve the last tomatoes from the plants in the greenhouse, pulverise the sunflower stalks with a mallet (Jo particularly enjoyed this) and generally tidy and prepare the garden for the colder months. By the end of the evening everything was shipshape and there were heaps of green tomatoes ready to be transformed into chutney. Now that's something to relish.

There was plenty of washing and drying up to be done, along with table clearing and hoovering. Such a great place to stop by in a lunch break and the blondie treat definitely helped with the energy levels.

I've never harvested potatoes but that was one of our jobs at this session. We dug them out of the compost and put them into a crate, ready for use at the Open Table, where a meal is cooked for the community. Meanwhile, Williams was back on compost-turning duty, having done such an impressive job last time. It was lovely to meet new GooodGymer Melissa, and we hope to see her again soon. The rain started to fall right at the end of the session, so it was time to make a dash and avoid the splash. We'll be back next month.

This was the church's monthly volunteering session and as ever Abby had lots of jobs for us to do, including weeding, watering, planting out an area under the laurel tree and turning the compost. The latter was tough work but Williams did a great job, while Clare shared her gardening expertise with the rest of us. We were joined by Penny, the very cute schnoodle, and refreshed with squash and banana bread. It's been lovely to see this garden blooming over the past few months.

The Merton posse turned up at the community garden armed with their gardening gloves, knee pads and trowels, all set for a session of weeding. But as it turned out, first on the list of tasks was relocating the numerous (but very well hidden) caterpillars from the cabbage patches into the wild flower area.

Some of us were better than others at spotting the tiny green creatures, but thankfully there was plenty of watering, dead heading and general tidying of this wonderful community resource to keep those of us with less than great eyesight busy. And a gardening task wouldn't be a gardening task without at least a little weeding.

Any calories burnt off over the hour were more than made up for by the Scottish delicacies kindly shared with the team by Rachael. So everyone left with a smile on their face and sugar on their tongues. Well, you've got to refuel, right?

Started the day lending a hand with the setup at The Open Table at Martin Way Methodist Church. It was a great way to kick off the morning, getting everything ready for the lunch session and grabbing a coffee afterwards.