Birthday Celebrations 🍺 for John

It was a great turn out for Johns special day.

We spent 45 minutes doing a very productive litter pick of the surrounding areas. The Birthday boy himself, John teamed up with Mrs R, Belinda and together with Daisy Roxy and Paula they headed off in the direction of Windsor Lawns. For Daisy this was an irresistible opportunity for a competition to see who could fill their bag more 🤣 which they all good naturedly joined in with. For Mr and Mrs R it must surely have also been a trip down memory lane where they used to live.

Heading out in the opposite direction were our intrepid explorers Sarah and Ryan who were fresh from a weekend walking from Hove to Hastings. Joining them today was also Gillybean and Sue. We all feel for Gill who is missing her beloved running with a heel spur injury 😪.

Finally Barbara myself and Sueconcentrated on the area around Splashpoint where there was loads of rubbish caught in bushes 🥺

After completion we all headed up to the pub to raise a glass and knife and fork to John where we were joined by parents to be Natacha and Steve together with Ricky and Nick too. Happy Days 😍

Little by little

This was our third visit back to this leisure centre garden. It's a project that we have kind of adopted as we found it sad to see it uncared for. Gillybean has always led the way on this task and we are always happy to get behind her ideas to give a helping hand.

Tonights task was to get the rectangular area of ground prepared and planted with grass seed.

Belinda armed with John's pads got straight down on her knees to weed. Paula was also part of the weeding team and the two of them also chatted about their up and coming BIG Birthdays and how they were feeling about the milestone together with how they may be celebrating them.

John himself, got some great pruning of shrubs and brambles done at the far end of the garden where its very overgrown whilst chatting to Daisy who was busy raking reading for sowing.

Roxy in her signature style got into some energetic digging followed by scattering the grass seed and watering.

Gillybean was part of the weeding, raking and sowing team with me pitching in wherever needed including lots of watering, plus the all important, taking of photos.

We will wait to see how the grass seed takes and return to dig some borders so that we can plant lots of bulbs which will make it look wonderful next Spring

Next week it's John's Birthday so we will be combining a litter pick / walk / run with some celebrating 🍾 😀

*Paul's special day *

What a great turn out it was for Paul epic 200th good deed. What an amazing journey its been since Paul came along with Tamsin in October 2017. We have absolutely LOVED every minute of our time with you at tasks and also at socials when you bring your husband John along too ( not forgetting Pepper and Milo too! )

Tonight was no exception with Paul, John and the 2 dogs helping to celebrate the amazing milestone. However, before the celebrations came the task!

What a group turn out

It was great to see Lucy and Duncan who came over especially for this evening from Portsmouth. Thank you both - much appreciated. Lets also not forget a guest appearance from our social secretary Tamsin who already has plans afoot for our annual Christmas get together - this year we are going to try for a December date and at exclusive location !

Our task tonight was to continue the remodelling of the garden at the leisure centre. Barbara had made a suggestion that the raised beds would be removed to be replaced with grass and Duncan also suggested wild flower beds. This has since been approved and will mean it will be much easier to maintain together with making it a prettier area for sitting out in.

The first job was to dismantle the beds and level the soil over the ground. Roxy was especially pleased as she was able to reclaim the wood from the beds for using in her allotment. We cant wait to see the photos of what she creates with her stash!

Thank you all for all the hard work tonight from all the team - Another special mention must go to Gillybean for her leadership and consistency in looking after this garden over the weeks, months (and years! )

Ryan and Sarah get the prize for the cutest photo of the evening :) Plus kudos to Ryan for not giving up his rake when we did the speedy swap in changeovers.

Anne and John get the prize for the best caption photo ( we still are unsure quite what was going on here but we are sure it was, somehow, a sign of Ann's appreciation of John! )

Sue and Lucy had a great action shot demonstrating 'lunges whilst you work' !

After the task came the awards ceremony with Paul loving his bespoke GG engraved tankard and putting it into immediate use! We all shared drinks and a picnic with everyone's contributions. Yum!! What a happy and buzzing night it was for GG Worthing! We were definitely feeling the love :)

Hope to see lots of you next week - in the meantime have a great last weekend of August.

Julia xx

Sunny Worthing

On a lovely August evening we pulled ourselves away from watching the Olympics to arrive at a task that we hadn't been to for a while, the garden at Worthing Leisure Centre. We were slightly despondent to see what a state it had got into but put that behind us as we were determined to work our usual magic on it. It was the first of 4 visits scheduled in the next month.

First to mention is our amazing Paul who it's always wonderful to see and whom I inadvertently left out of the run report last week ( but not the register ! ) So sorry Paul 😞 Tonights was Paul's 197th task so he and I chatted through plans to celebrate his 200th ! Paul did the most amazing pruning of a tree in the seated area of the cafe and function room. He singlehandedly almost filled up the compost heap with the trail of bindweed and discarded overgrown branches. Together with sweeping the srea it looked a whole lot better than it had done ! This looked like a very satisfying time well spent!

Gillybeanwho was in charge tonight opened up the shed and got out tools . The instructions were simply, to get stuck in, as everywhere we looked, it needed attention.

Gill immediately played to her strengths with some digging out of an area where the children had in previous years planted sunflowers 🌻 ( which we had prepared the ground for ) followed by extensive pruning of loads of shrubs all surrounding the area ( more for the compost heap! )

Roxy did a fantastic job on one of the raised beds clearing it the completely digging it over which looked fantastic !

Barbara did similar with the other raised bed but left a few plants that were still flowering.

Belinda helped Gill with the digging over of the previous sunflower bed before helping Paul clear up his prunings.

All this time John had been quietly digging over one of the other ( slightly ) raised beds including trying to level out a few mounds of earth ( a few jokes passed through about the whereabouts of Duncan and Lucy 🤣 )

Several of us had been foraging for figs whilst tidying up under the tree too ! The figs were absolutely 💯 delicious and those that like them feasted on them !

Check out all the ' before ' photos that Gillybean took on her visit last night 😱

From a wilderness to a less of a wilderness it was, despite the neglect, an extremely satisfying one hour well spent.

Have a great week everyone 🤩

Julia xx