The award-winning Ealing Half Marathon is one of the events of the year for runners and supporters in Ealing and across the country. Our group of walkers, wanderers, minstrels, travelers, joggers and runners gathered together for a key job ahead of this year's half on 27 September - advance notice signs of road closures. Yes, sooper dooper important for our supportive local residents to know what's happening on the day.

This was a carefully planned logistical enterprise, with weeks and months (well, minutes and hours) of high level project planning (well, some notes on Harvey's iPhone and jumping on the bus with a bag of signs). Two groups were formed, with members chosen for their specific skills mix after significant testing and modeling (well, the people standing together on one side at our meeting spot, and, erm, the people standing together on the other side at our meeting spot). It helped that we had a range of heights within our team because street furniture (esp. lamp posts) is our bread and butter. There was a slight suspicion that one group was competing with the other to get their share of signs put up first. Or was it that they wanted to get home in time to watch the football? Whatever.

A year out from the last time we fed cable ties together, you wouldn't believe how many different kinds of lamp posts there are! You might not actually care, but you would if the lamp post was too fat to get your cable tie around!

We guided around our section of the half marathon route as the sun set over the West Ealing tall towers (how romantic).

Before we finished, there was just time for Sevan to enact a culturally iconic Bob Dylan music video from 1965 (hence the title of this report). Then, like rolling stones, we blew in the wind, to head off and knock on the heaven's door we call home.

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Elthorne Park saw many battles between the burdock and Ealing GoodGymers. Maybe not a hundred, but at least eight in the recorded history. The ninth encounter was going to be a special one.

"Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Five GoodGymers unexpectedly descended on Elthorne Park on Thursday, breaking the four-year-old rule of confronting their enemy on Tuesday evenings. They came from different directions, using diverse modes of transport to surprise and surround burdock. Richard and Kash ran to the park, Amy and Shree cycled, and Dora walked. All GoodGymers were carrying sharp loppers and protective gloves.

It was the very first GoodGym session for Shree, whom we warmly welcomed as she went into battle with the invasive plant with unwavering enthusiasm.

”To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” - misatributed to Sun Tzu.

Some of us took that advice to become the enemy quite literally, letting the sticky burrs cover us head to toe, to the point where we had more burrs on us than a real burdock plant!

It took us one hour in total to locate a burdock-ridden area along the path from the Bambi statue to the River Brent, just ahead of Osterley Lock, and cut back large patches of the invasive plant. We dropped all the cuttings behind a nearby woodchip pile, creating our own heap towering over its neighbour, to avoid the spread of burdock seeds outside that area. Hopefully, next year we’ll see fewer burdock clusters in the south of Elthorne Park!

If a conservation session in Hanwell like the one above (minus the burdock) sounds like your thing, why not join us on Saturday the 12th September at one of community orchards in Hanwell?

If you don’t want to wait that long, we have an outdoor session for you this Saturday at Horsenden Farm, followed by team lunch. Sign up to be part of it!

Do you know how many hidden gems are waiting to be discovered in Ealing? Some of them are hidden right in plain sight in the heart of the town! Four new Ealing GoodGymers who joined in the last two weeks uncovered one such place during our Tuesday evening session in August.

We welcomed Sasha, who joined us for her very first GoodGym experience, and Dora, who had actually got involved with us unofficially a few weeks ago. Both of them opted for a short run led by Sevan to pick up the tools from Walpole Park. Conor, Steph Ducat and Kash also met at the Ealing Broadway station for the run.

Alana and Janet, who returned for more GoodGymming after kicking off the adventure at last Wednesday's session, walked to the park together to meet the runners, the cyclists Maria and Amy, and Freya, who made her way directly to the task.

The next stop, after the tool pickup, was the Lammas Community Orchard and Wild Play Area, also known by other names.

"Welcome to the Garden of Eden!" - said Trevor from Ealing Transition, the host of today's task.

Trevor told everyone the story about the orchard, which used to be one of the tennis courts in the Lammas Enclosure between Lammas and Walpole Parks. In 2011, local children planted fruit trees on the tennis hard court surface - and it worked!

"Nature is very resilient." - Trevor.

Today's task was orchard maintenance, including cutting back brambles and pruning the fruit trees. The important part was to recycle the cuttings as material to fill the gaps in the orchard's outer fence, and to make the space safe, but not too manicured.

"Nature doesn't like neatness." - Trevor.

Although we clearly had a preference for rewilded space over sports grounds, the surviving tennis facilities have proven very useful. Janet and Maria were able to source the water for their cans from the tennis club and top up the wildlife pond.

The unexpected attractions in the orchard were a branch with desiccated plums, praised for its beauty, and a crab apple tree - a perfect background for the group photo as it had the most fruit.

"It has so much fruit because no one likes them. They are very bitter." - Trevor.

The evening tasks aren’t over yet! This Thursday, we’re heading to Southall for a walking task. There’ll be no running involved on the night itself, but we’ll be spreading the word about a new beginners’ running programme and helping local people discover a new way to get active - sign up now!

Next Tuesday's session will be led by Steph, who will take us for a short run or walk to St Mary's Church to help remove the weeds from the churchyard garden - register here!

It's been over 50 consecutive days - and counting - without any rain in some parts of London, and Western Road Urban Garden in Southall required a constant effort from Janpal and volunteers to help the site keep up with the ongoing heat. The exotic vegetables inside the polytunnel were doing well, and the veg plot we had cleared, woodchipped and partially planted only a month ago started already producing crops such as aubergines and tomatoes! None of that came without a price. Manual watering of veg beds took a lot of time and energy and wouldn't be sustainable in the long term. That's something the architect of Western Road community garden Ash wanted to address for a while.

In February this year, we had taken first steps towards executing Ash's vision of installing two 1000-litre rainwater containers. The mud wasn't going to serve as a reliable base for a tonne of water in a single container, so after digging out the soil, we'd been looking forward to pouring the concrete into the square spaces for a few months. Today was the day to make Ash's vision reality!

Seven GoodGymers came to support Western Road on a Saturday morning in August:

• Walkers: Angela
• Runners: Sevan and Kash
• Cyclists: Scott, Amy and Steph
• Cyclists/parkrunners: Richard

The Plant Squad

Angela, Amy and Janpal had plenty of tasks to do: from weeding the bed alongside the polytunnel, to harvesting and watering the new veg plot. In the polytunnel, they discovered a watermelon that looked pretty good on the outside, but a closer look revealed a small hole and the fact that the fruit was half eaten inside! Judging by the size of the hole, it looked like a rat, rather than Mr Fox, was the prime suspect this time. To save the other juicy crops, Janpal ordered the harvesting of the green tomatoes before the rat laid its eyes on them. Amy found some very long chili peppers, and everyone had a chance to see ripe snake gourds.

Janpal's top tip for cooking a snake gourd:

"Make sure to take the skin off and discard the seeds. We haven't done it last time, and that was the most bitter thing I've ever had!"

The Concrete Cowboys

The group keen to learn concreting skills joined Ash and started with combining the mixture for a base for the water container:

• 4 parts shingle
• 2 parts coarse sand
• 1 part cement
• plasticiser.

While Steph, Richard and Sevan mixed the concrete in a tray to wheelbarrow it to the destination hole surrounded by a wooden frame, Scott, Kash and Ash cleared the weeds inside and around the frame, assisted with pouring the mix, then levelled and tamped the concrete.

The team used up all the resources allocated for one of the bases, then threw in some rubble to bulk up the base, but there wasn't enough material to finish off that stage of the project. Despite great teamwork and solid progress, we'll need to come back to finish off the job when more materials are available. Join us next Wednesday!