There was already a big queue of people outside South Ealing Community Food Cupboard at 10:30am, 2 and a half hours before the doors opened to the public. Going inside, Sevan found that one of the regular clients had made banana bread, which was being shared around the volunteers, including Martin, Eliz and Sevan. The banana bread was a vision of what was to come.

When the delivery van arrived, Sevan was in the sun, carting crates of food to the church building and handing them over to Martin, who'd find the right spot to place them to be unpacked later. Eliz was busy organising the food donations, especially trying to stack the fridges in a sensible way to make everything fit and still have the food be easily accessible.

The shelves and fridges were stacked speedily and ready for service by 11:30. There were big deliveries of bananas, bread and mushrooms for the clients to help themselves to and banana bread is probably on the menu again for the volunteers next week 😋.

In the run up to Eid, Care 4 Calais had received a lot of requests for abayas and had been given a huge number of them as donations by a mosque. Today's task for GoodGym Ealing was to bag up the requests, ready to be delivered in the evening.

Michelle returned for her second task with Care 4 Calais in a week and was generous enough to bring some clothes donations, while Eliz was helping there for the first time and had managed to change into some clothes that weren't caked in clay after the morning task at Grove Farm.

At the start of the session, Michelle and Sevan learned that abayas were sized by height, generally from 50 to 60, which matched the wearer. Helpfully, the boxes were laid out sorted by size and had been filtered by a Muslim woman who knew what she was doing. Each pack was to contain 3 abayas, with at least one being black and 3 headscarves, with 1 black, 1 patterned and 1 new to keep things fair for the recipients. The team started with the shortest requests, the size 50s, and worked upwards in height. Everyone found that the work was quite relaxing as every request was similar, so they got into a good rhythm.

The first abayas were quite conservative. Then they found some more modern prints and soon after Eliz raised a concern. Was an abaya with a floral print actually a nightie? It might be. Tamzin took a look and it was, so Eliz was rightie. So much for the clothes being pre-filtered. Other non-conforming "abayas" were found, which were pyjamas, jumpsuits or summer dresses 👗. They all went into a rejects box to be used for other purposes as they were still useful donations.

Time was tight and the packs needed to be completed by 5pm, so everyone stayed a bit longer, working with Tamzin and a new Care 4 Calais volunteer to finish the last requests. As the GoodGymers wrapped up, the completed packs were piled high all around the first floor, ready for the driver who'd be arriving soon. Great work team! 🙌🎉👏

It was not brambles, ivy or litter that were the main nuisance at Grove Farm today. Friends of Grove Farm had another problem to fix: a leaking pond! A pool of water at the bottom of the park's hill was surrounded by clay borders and one of the walls was reinforced with a fallen willow. Unfortunately, the dead tree fortified by clay was not doing its job to keep the water in. We don't know if the Paradise Fields beaver engineers were consulted about building a dam, but the GoodGym Ealing plumbing team got there first!

Three Friends of Grove Farm: Anna, Mike and Olena were joined on Saturday by a strong team of six GoodGymers. The job was to excavate some clay, and then fill the gaps that were causing the leak. We had an archaeologist and an engineer (a network engineer to be specific) on the team, which boosted our confidence about digging and constructing things. One team: Sevan, Simon, Mehmet and Mike were sent to mine for clay at the other part of the park, while the rest stayed at the pond. Gaby and Kash were digging the clay locally, eroding the top of existing walls that did not have to be as high, and Eliz, Anna and Olena did most of the construction work, patching the leaky pond barrier.

To make sure that the clay is properly compacted, our builders were performing a flagship GoodGym exercise - muddy mountain climbers (see how Eliz did it!). That routine was not only a perfect workout for the legs and core but also for nature. Which other gym has that on their offer?

The last ten minutes of the task was spent on cleaning the tools, followed by a short excursion to the wood anemone location. Cutting back all the brambles in that area in the winter paid off - we were dazzled by a wonderful carpet of white flowers against the greenery of the woodlands!

Wood anemones will be still flowering in the next two weeks, so if you are keen to see their beauty, join Friends of Grove Farm for creating habitats for slow worms next week or the conservation day in April.