Wednesday marked a return to Orchard Triangle to help the Marston Community Gardeners. The warm wer weather has been heaven for cow parsley, and all of the young fruit trees were surrounded by head-high weed growth. Our task? De-cow parsley the fruit trees, weed a good circle around the base of each tree and mulch with a barrowful of woodchip.

Setting to work, we unearthed most of the central patch of trees - featuring figs, apples and pears. Our battle against the bitey evening midges continues, but I think we're starting to win with the new additions to our arsenal (Avon Skin so soft spray, citronella bracelets, long trousers).

Welcome to GoodGym Andy!

With light evenings comes the return of tasks in Oxford's green spaces, and one of our favourites is Aston's Eyot. Tucked between the Iffley Road and the river, the Eyot was a rubbish dump in the 19th Century, but it's now a thriving nature reserve managed by the Friends of Aston's Eyot.

Wednesday's task was nettle removal. Scything and pulling the nettles allows light to get through for wild flowers, and removing them reduces the richness of the soil, which wild flowers prefer. This should all help increase the biodiversity of the area. Scything is always a fan favourite at GoodGym, so there were plenty of volunteers for that task. Henry very competently assembled the new scythe, and Axelle did great work pruning back an elder tree which was getting a little thuggish. Some of the GoodGymers were lucky enough to spot 2 muntjac deer on the way home - it's always surprising and delightful how much nature can thrive yards from busy city streets.

Great work team!

Welcome to GoodGym Emma and Ines.

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!