Lismore Circus Community Woods is an urban space in Gospel Oak, staffed by volunteers, which is where we come in. They can always do with some extra help and there were ten of us!

First we had to move a fallen tree. Then we set to work on the hedges, which were growing over footpaths and a cycle path, and were generally looking rather untidy. Fancying ourselves as skilled hairdressers, we thought about working on perms, wedges, buns, braids, and mullets, but in the end just made some nice fringes.

By the time we’d finished, the paths were free of overhanging and overgrown foliage, and the hedges were cut back to leave a proper edge to the path.

A special welcome to Victoria, who we’d previously met at Hampstead ParkRun, and was here for her first ever good deed! See you again soon Victoria.

Great sunny Friday vibes everywhere in Camden ☀️ today. Gosia and Alex decided to spend this afternoon by helping Mrs J in tidying her garden.

We arrived around 5 pm at Mrs J's door and rung a buzzer 🚪. She warmly welcomed us but then right away told us that she just heard some bad news so it was clear she didn't feel particularly well today.

She showed us where the garden 🌱 is, where the tools are 🧹🧹 and also what needs to be done. The garden looked quite tidy from the first sight🕵‍♀️, but the devil is in the details! It turned out that actually many leaves 🍂, dirt and dust was hiding between the flower pots.

We then indulged ourselves in a sweeping / hide and seek journey, maneuvering between the various objects in the garden and also our conversational topics 💬.

Mrs J also asked us to change the bird food 🐦, a task that was handled by Mr Alex whose height and agility were just perfectly right for the job. When Mrs J suggested we could get a stool 🪑 we kindly but promptly declined 😆.

We thought we did a pretty decent job with sweeping and stuff but Mrs J did find a couple of spots that did not reach this perfection 👀. We quickly caught up and neatly packed the waste into provided bags.

Before leaving the flat we have taken other bin bags that were already there when we arrived. We put all the waste into the bins outside Mrs J's property. We hope, that our visit sprinkled a bit of good spirit energy in Mrs J's day 🙂.

Why does sweeping never end with just sweeping?

This is my experience of GoodGym...

"...yeah – that sounds about right – maybe just start with some sweeping over there..."

...and before you know it... you've built a gazebo or painted a bench!

Just sweeping was how our wonderful group – of Charlie, Danny, Emily, Gosia, Gus, Imogen, John, Michael, and Steve – started at the beautiful Cecil Sharp House on Wednesday evening.

In perfect May sun, sweeping strewn leaves is a good place to start – I even thought perhaps it really will just be sweeping – but then...

... Emily grabbed a hose and started dousing the (bountiful) flower beds around the house – I even flowers inch their heads towards the flowing water, and then...

...Charlie, Danny, Gus, Imogen, and John descended on a pile of... well, I'm not too sure what it was really – wooden crates, fallen branches, cut ivy – a pile of things that needed discarding! I turned my back and before I knew it... the van's boot was cleared, the crates had been snapped, and everything had been tidily bagged up! And then...

...seemingly everyone was busy planting seeds (all manner of wonderful flowers) in a row of planters! And not to forget...

...the sweeping that everyone started with... that was all finished too :)

And we finished off by cutting some fresh mint (all gifted to us by our brilliant host, Susannah) to take home – very wonderful!

Amazing work, everyone! Thank you for a lovely evening!