The first properly cold day of the season had arrived, but GoodGym perseveres come rain come shine, and come dark cold wintery evenings.

We met Ken on the corner of Petersham Common, where our task for the night was to plant 200 tulip bulbs, to bring in a burst of colour come springtime. We donned our high-viz, and we set to work, digging up six inches of soil. Question: is this a man’s six inches or a woman’s six inches. Ken smiled, ‘a man’s’ and Liz grinned back ‘so four then’. Once we had ourselves down to a satisfactory depth, it was time to plant the bulbs, arranging them in the ground, and wondering which colours would bloom come March.

Susannah had arrived at this point, fresh from her NEW place (which has been a discussion point of GoodGym Richmond for probably 2 years now!). Better late than never, and got stuck right in. It was time to shovel the soil back over, with a poo-tifal addition of some freshly laid horse poop from the roadside. Resourceful? I think so. Man-ure smart for making use of what we have around us!

What’s better than one late arrival to a task? Two! Jp showed his face at this point, after a tough day at the office. Perfect timing, as we were ready to stamp down the laid soil, and could take some of our stresses out on the ground. Topics of conversation at this point also involved burying difficult clients at work, and whether the best strategy for disposing of a body would be in plain site wearing high-viz next to the Petersham Road.

Adam gave us a final stamp of soil and a sprinkling of leaves, and job was a good one. Ken rewarded us with mince pies for our efforts. Alex was so keen to get hers home she forgot she was in her bright orange high visibility vest and was halfway back to Richmond before we realised!

Alex was clearly keen to brighten up the dark cold evenings, and have something to look forward to. In her case, a treat from Ken, and for the rest of us, a long winter ahead hopefully filled with fun, friends and food, and some beautifully coloured flowers on the roadside in four or so months time.

Fun task this morning as a bunch of goodgymer's and other volunteer groups combined to do a mass litter pick across Petersham common. Led by our unfortunately injured, but local resident outdoors man Ken - we set about combing the area clean of garbage. There was a lot but we smashed through it, and felt good for having done our bit! Coffee and a stroll past the 3 pigeons plot (another goodgym managed site) to admire the lovely flowers and we were done!

On to the next one... Monday ... "we go again! We do not let this slip!" :-)

A warm welcome to Honor this evening who joined us for the first time to run from the Tap in Richmond out to Petersham Common. There task owner and member, Ken, met us to explain the tasks needed to work on the last section of traditional hedgerow down Star & Garter hill that we started last winter. This included fence post carrying, fence post bashing and binding between posts, hawthorn planting and some surrounding litter picking. The team set straight to work including another first time GoodGymmer, Emily 😍

When it came to the time to run back, Ken plied us with fortifying chocolates as the group headed back up to Richmond High Street for a well-deserved rest and warm up!

Three GoodGymers turned up on a very cloudy and wet morning to help the Petersham Common Conservators plant trees but with a last minute sign up there were only 2 spades so we took turns and did litter picking as well. It was a productive wet morning but we soon had planted 50 trees to gap up the hedgerow along Star and Garter Hill and filled the bin bags with litter.

One GoodGymer planted 125 Midland hawthorn trees on Petersham Common. It was a beautiful sunny bright winter day and the target to get in 1,000 native tree this winter on Petersham Common is nearly complete. Not everyone was born this way to plant these thorns as they have such large roots so each thorn tree required extra digging. It is the final stretch with another 150 thorns left to plant on Friday 31 Jan.

One GoodGymer turned up to help 27 Sea Scouts cubs from Petersham learn how to plant trees. This involved a lot of digging to plant holly and hawthorn trees on Petersham Common followed by hot chocolate making. In the end 75 trees were planted and almost an equal quantity of hot chocolate was consumed.