Angela, Sheila and Jack gathered at Nature's Haven, alongside other volunteers, to continue the creation of the new mini orchard. Sheila and Angela fancied some physical work, so set about digging up some Choisya roots to clear the ground ready for seeding with wild flower seeds. Meanwhile Jack helped Roger pull ivy off the building. We admired the bee hotel that had been made that afternoon by a volunteer team from Centrica. Nature's Haven is living up to its name! We took a break for a cup of tea, some cake and wished Jack a Happy Birthday 🎂

This evening's group run took us about 2km up the hill to All Saints C of E Junior School, where it turned out we had just 20 minutes to blitz a gardening task.

No problem! When a dozen GoodGymers are fenced into a small triangle of land and Nicola is armed with a children's spade, we can do quite a lot of scarifying, weeding and generally flinging bits of turf around.

This was exactly what was needed to prepare the ground for master re-soiler Angela, who arrived just in time to spread some fresh compost around.

We then bombed the area with seeds and we hope nature will do the rest to turn this patch into a lovely wildflower haven for pollinators.

After what was possibly the speediest bit of gardening we've ever done, we headed off to celebrate Scarlett's 50th good deed with some of Gillian's gorgeous ginger cake. Scarlett started GoodGyming in July 2023, so has done really well, notching up more than 1 good deed a week. Congratulations Scarlett - here's to the next 50!

Lisa, Angela and Sheila helped out at Nature's Haven, joined a little bit later by Roberta after she had finished her day's work. Today was a very exciting day. After all the shrub cutting, shredding, root extraction and ground digging over the last few weeks by Goodgymmers and other volunteers, we actually got to plant some fruit trees! The ground was raked over, and some very special fertiliser from an exclusive restaurant was applied, and we were ready to go. Angela and Lisa dug three deep holes, and planted three cordon apple trees. After some consultation about the precise positioning, the fourth hole was dug and planted with a step-over apple tree. What an awesome foursome! We then planted some perennials and bluebells as groundcover between the trees. We gave them all a good watering, and stood back to admire our work. It was great to see the transformation of this area, and look forward to some scrumping in the future!

Last night, 10 Goodgymers met at the Community Centre for a pre-match pep talk before heading off to tackle tasks awaiting us at Holyport FC.

Once there, we split into two teams, armed ourselves with shovels and paintbrushes (not at the same time, although I’d like to see what that task would be) and the game began!

Team Shingle was well practiced at making pothills out of mountains from our previous matches here. They managed to get rid of two piles of shingle by hiding them in potholes along the access road to the pitches, before the final whistle was blown.

Meanwhile, it was a total eclipse of the fence as Team Painters covered a lot of ground (and fences), but finally won the day when the paint went in off the woodwork to seal the victory with a dazzling display of beautiful brushwork.

There was no need to go into overtime, even though we’d probably have like to - by the end of the night, the match was won by both teams. Another three points to Goodgym, which we were all over the moon about!