Snakes & Bladders

Today's chapter of the Great Move of Cultivate's Plant Nursery was hosted by GoodGym Ealing but had a strong team from GoodGym Hounslow: Pippa, Michelle and Luis, a last-minute addition recruited by Michelle. GoodGym Hammersmith & Fulham also sent reinforcements: the indispensable Divya. The whole team, including Ealing's Kash, already visited Plant Nursery on Wednesday but couldn't get enough of relocating plants who cannot walk themselves.

Romina from Cultivate wanted to start big and pointed us towards a huge barrel that had to be moved closer to the gate. We discovered that the big boy hadn't been to a toilet for a while and needed help emptying his bladder. The ladies pretended to look away while Luis tipped Mr Barrel to help it relieve itself after years of discomfort. The happy empty barrel rolled then cheerfully to begin a new life which started by the gate.

We're about to enter the jungle. - Michelle

Michelle, who had learned the hard way how it feels to have her ankles covered in insect bites, handed the whole team the Jungle Spray. We were now ready to encounter spiders lurking between plants and under bricks and planks we would be moving today.

The next task had us sweating in a polytunnel, sorting two cages of wooden planks. Romina was super fast to decide which pile a plank would land in: keep, maybe or ditch. We had to be quick moving them around!

Fast forward, we found ourselves relocating plant pots using the Morrisons trolley. We didn't find out how the Morrisons trolley became a resident of the Plant Nursery - it might have looked for a more fulfilling job than carrying someone's groceries at a supermarket. The plant pot move involved a fair amount of atchoos and regrets of not taking antihistamine tablets. Maybe the pot inhabitants didn't like the idea of being rehomed and fought with the only weapon they had to preserve their independence. We think that pollen spray should be illegal.

The Morrisons trolley has not retired after all the plants have been transported. Alongside a sturdy warehouse trolley, it served as a vehicle for bricks that had to be collected from one area and neatly arranged somewhere else. Divya was in charge of the building site where the bricks were dropped while the rest of the team engaged in a snake triage.

On a pallet where the bricks resided we found tangled water hoses 🐍 Just as with the wooden planks, Romina wanted to determine which pipes are good enough to keep and which are fatally injured and were to be thrown away. This time she left to us the decision about which snakes were ever going to see the new Plant Nursery. In the snake world, it was the survival of the fittest and Michelle had very little mercy for the flimsy-looking specimens. Those were thrown to oblivion (a.k.a the rubbish pile). As usual, we had lots of fun hurling things in the sky. Luis gave us a performance of his axe-throwing skills using a metal bar in place of the axe and a discarded pallet as a target.

Romina, busy as usual with coordinating tons of volunteer groups, had to head out to another site before the end of our task. She gave us a critical mission of securing the Plant Nursery. We turned off the sprinkler and locked up the place. It is now waiting for another batch of jolly volunteers to come and have fun while helping Cultivate to continue operating while their Plant Nursery is being turned into a building site.