Of mice and musketeers

Ten GoodGymers met on a sunny Saturday for the third instalment of our community mission hat trick at GoodGym Hackney this month. Shout out to Toyin and Clair for making it to all three!

Many of the group had started the morning with Hackney Marshes parkrun to join Clair in celebrating her 100th* parkrun!

So even before getting stuck into the task, those who had run parkrun were particularly  excited when Liz pulled put an enormous box of amazing homemade cupcakes to fuel us through the next few hours of gardening with the Tree Musketeers.

Helping the Tree Musketeers is a regular mission for Goodgym. They're a group of volunteers at a local tree nursery, growing trees which will later be planted in Hackney's parks. Knowing we were coming, they had saved up several large and heavy tasks for us.

First of all there was a raised bed in the poly-tunnel where the plants had caught an infection. All of the plants and soil needed removing so the infection didn't spread further so we shovelled up bags of waste to move to a skip. About twenty big bagfuls of soil later, the beds were empty and we were tasked with dismantling them and removing the heavy railway sleepers supporting them. We learnt that John is pretty wicked with a sledge hammer, Danny loves spiders and Anna is super strong, grrr.

Next the group split up depending on what they wanted to do, with Toyin joining  another group of volunteers repotting some small trees, Liz and Stefania clearing and cleaning a grassy area by the polytunnels and everyone else creating a new area for a compost heap. Armed wi7th mattocks, spades, rakes and hoes, the team began chopping out weeds and roots and shovelling all the  soil out to create a space which will become an extended compost heap at a later date. At one point we uncovered a family of five baby field mice, who needed carefully rehoming into a new nest nearby.

Having cleared these areas it was time for a cup of tea and more of Liz's cakes!

This is a regular mission so keep an eye out for future missions if you want to return! We'll  be doing tree planting in coming months.