We had a muddy good time and then lived apple-y ever after

Our run of dry Wednesday evenings had to end sometime, and tonight was the night. Soggy was definitely the word, but a little rain doesn't deter the determined GoodGymer (although we'd be grateful if the weather doesn't take that as permission to rain on us too often!).

Meeting at Florence Park (sad to report no chalk dinosaurs survived the recent downpours), armed with gardening gloves and waterproofs, we set off in convoy to the Children's Allotment.

Every time we go to the Children's Allotment there is noticeable progress on the site. They had lots of exciting plans for the spring, which COVID lockdown entirely derailed, so now it's all-hands-on-deck to try to make up for lost time. We had three main tasks tonight: weeding, skipping, and picking.

To give a sense of the scale of the task they've undertaken with the site they've now nearly filled their 7th HUGE skip with rubbish, rubble and brambles. All that work has opened up a lovely site, with vegetable growing areas and an orchard of apple and damson trees.

Team skip pitch-forked rubbish into skip no.7 then gathered up rubble and re-homed that in the skip too.
Team weed got the muddiest I've ever seen people get at a GoodGym task as they cleared the weeds from around an apple tree, and the breakaway group weeded a new bed to make it ready for vegetable planting (with a little bit of nasturtium nibbling as they worked).
Team pick picked apples and damsons and sifted through the windfalls for edible fruit. It turns out this task was even worse than litter-picking for forcing people to contort into uncomfortable positions to grab that one more that is JUST out of reach!

As the rain intensified and everyone reached the end of their alloted tasks we filled our boots (or backpacks) with eating apples and scooted out promising to return in 2 weeks.

We had a new red Tshirt on show tonight, as Kate's has arrived. We're now placing bets on whether Sarah or Bethan's black Tshirt arrives first.

We always love having new GoodGymers along, and this week we extended a warm (if soggy) welcome to Rebecca and Mariam. Lovely to meet you both!

Bethan rashly promised to make apple cake from her apple haul, so there may be apple cake at next week's task at Hogacre Common. Fingers crossed!