Hard as Nails

A group of hardy GG Yorkies ran back to St Nicks to finish what we had started with the added bonus of daylight.

With six of us fresh from the GoodGym York starter session (including the infamous Paul Kelly doing a double good deed on his first ever day of GoodGym) and the added help of Tim, EJ and Darren - we set to work finishing off our wildflower beds on the meadow of St Nicks. I say set to work.. first everyone had a cup of tea and a chat to warm themselves up, and then we set to work.

We had to build wooden borders around the beds with non-uniform bits of wood, create struts with some square sections of wood and then nail the borders into the struts. Our main issue was that the nails were not round, they were flat, and even the handiest of hammerers could not bang a single nail in a straight line.

Mel was losing the plot with the hammering and shifted focus to hammering in tacks to attach the weed mesh instead. In fact we all changed tactics when we realised the ground was soft enough just to sledgehammer the wooden borders straight in. There were just enough nails in the right places to hold it all together and with the struts sawn off, the beds looked excellent.

Next up we had to go dig out our own compost. Jonathan led us to an area in the maze of St Nicks footpaths where we could chuck away the topsoil and dig out the sandy stuff underneath, perfect for wildflowers. Two rounds of digging and wheelbarrowing were enough to cover both of our beds with lovely fresh compost - which EJ raked to absolute perfection.

You should stay and just rake for us all the time! -Jonathan

After we prized EJ away from the rake we barrowed all the tools back to the eco-centre and fantasised about all the other cups of tea we could go home and drink, and we did.