Iffley Glebe plays a vital role in maintaining the rural atmosphere of Iffley village. The glebe is full of wildflowers and the hedge across the field provides birds with nesting places, and insects and berries for food. The glebe is owned by Oxford Preservation Trust and they often ask GoodGym to help with maintenance tasks.

This week we were tackling one of our regular tasks - weeding the Iffley Glebe wall. Everyone spread out along the inner and outer walls to denude it of weeds and stop them from getting roots established and destroying the structure. We managed to get the whole front boundary wall cleared, and most of the inside too, filling a large sack with greenery in the process. The mossies were probably delighted at all the flesh to feast on, so we all have some itchy momentos. Note to self; find the local Avon lady for insect repellant.

We'll probably be back to Iffley Glebe again later in the summer for a second go over the wall, plus tackling a section on the northern edge of the site, some hay raking, and sycamore removal.

Welcome to GoodGym Jenny!

This week we made our second trip to Bayards Hill Primary School to help with the progress of their garden. The aim is to have a functioning garden so that the children can learn about the life cycle of plants and understand how food is grown. Armed with various tools and with one eye on some VERY threatening clouds we set to work weeding a huge pile of soil, rescuing some tulips in the raised beds, amassing a petting zoo of snails and assorted other bugs, redistributing some daffodil bulbs ready for next spring and topping up some planters with de-weeded soil. Many hands made quick work and we thankfully finished just as the rain started, it was a soggy run back to base though!

We had a muddy and quite chilly evening at Bayard's Hill primary school getting their garden started.

The school had some raised beds built as part of a wider community project, but the area needs tlc before if can be used for growing.

This week we weeded the majority of the raised beds and most of the pile of topsoil to fill them, as well as litter picking the site.

Next week we'll finish that task and top up the beds with soil. Soon we hope to be able to build paths around the beds to make access and maintenance easier.

A huge pat on the back everyone: we made it through the winter! The clocks change this weekend and it'll be return of light evenings from next week.

Ovada are a non-profit gallery space with limited funding and a small staff team. Car park hire is a key source of income that enables them to run events, exhibitions of socially engaged work, and an education programme where they offer a number of subsidised and bursary places.

With only a small staff team it is hard to keep on top of maintenance, so they called in our GoodGym flash mob to get their car park area ship shape.

Bundled up against the spring showers we litter-picked, shifted rubbish out for collection, weeded, and pulled up nettles (achieving the first nettle stings of the year).

In the hour before the light faded we got the area looking a lot better and less nettley. Now we just need some dry weather for the mud situation to improve!

10 Goodgymers braved the rain for a return to the Thirsty Meeples board game cafe. Despite being quite a large group we managed to find three different games we could all play - Moniker (a mix of charades, one word descriptions, and mime), Fake Artist (the dubious drawing skills), and Deception (figuring out whodunnit). We discovered Colin the Caterpillar is surprisingly hard to draw, there are many ways to commit murder in parks and toilets, and not everyone has a very convincing poker face.

Thank you to everyone for joining these social sessions during the wintery months, any suggestions for more fair-weather options, let me know!