Great to meet Hamza for your first GoodGym Manchester session 👏

This evening, we met up outside the Whitworth Art Gallery for a light jog towards Longsight - the 422 Community Hub - with a rucksack full of food donations to give to their community pantry. This included UHT milk 🥛 tins of beans 🫘 tinned fish 🐟 tinned meat 🍖 rice pudding, coffee ☕️ and tinned fruit.

After passing onto reception, we used a couple of the litter pickers from the CleanUp UK box to do a litterpick of the surrounding streets. After a loop of the building, we headed down Birch Lane, only to discover a fly tipping litter grotspot that took most of our attention. We collected 8 refuse sacks plus 2 sacks containing 18 laughing gas canisters! 🚮

All rubbish was collated and reported to the council and Keep MCR Tidy for collection.

Another mission for Mr S who was resting up after a couple of days in hospital. He had enjoyed getting back out in the garden before that, so today I was tackling a corner overrun by nettles and brambles.

With a good rake and secateurs, plus plenty of pulling power, bit by bit I managed to clear the space, doing my best not to get too many stings or scratches.

I managed to fill the green bin plus form a serious pile of brambles to break down, leaving the area much clearer and possible to maintain with lower maintenance. I'll likely be back to tackle the roots in future.

Another mission to help out Mrs L with the hedges and trees 🌳 in the back yard.

A kind neighbour allowed us to borrow his extendable hedge trimmer and between that and a pruning saw and secateurs borrowed from MCR LOT, I managed to get a lot hacked away.

Good ladder 🪜 helped and plenty of arm and upper body workout to keep the branches trimmed back. Green bin filled to the brim with plenty chopped up and piled up to go out for green waste in future. Likely back in future. Nice chat about Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 afterwards.