Fanette and Ben went along to help out the community orchard team at Heaton Park. The area has only recently been tended to after being left fallow since covid. As a result, brambles, nettles, and balsam had taken over while the apple 🍎 and other fruit trees continued to grow.

With sturdy gloves and a collection of tools, we put in a good 1.5 hours of hard graft, removing sizeable areas of balsam, nettles, and other weeds from around the fruit trees and pathways, every now and again jumping up and down on the balsam to give it a good bashing.

While difficult to find (both of us stumbled upon the apiary or bee 🐝 houses nearby on the way in), the spot is looking to get back to full use, with Rebecca (the task leader) aiming to have Heaton Park cider available in the coming years.

Tough but satisfying task. We'll be back balsam bashing in other parts of Heaton Park later this month.

Another gardening session for Mr S. With the warm weather, everything had grown so it took a solid 90 minutes of weeding to get back to ship shape.

Brambles were removed, weeds were dug out, and grass was mowed down to give the front garden a thorough refresh.

More brambles were chopped out, while leaving those growing tasty blackberries, and more nettles were ripped out. Roots were dug out where possible and a thorough weeding of the patio was carried out.

Mr S was kind enough to provide a coffee and a chocolate bar for sustenance. Very thankful for that. Likely back regularly to keep on top of things over the warmer summer months.

Good turnout this morning, with 467 participants at event number 304 at Fletcher Moss parkrun. 97 completing their first parkrun here, with 16 completing their first ever parkrun 👏

Hazel, Laura, and Ben joined 19 others to volunteer for the event. Hazel marshalled at point 7 to keep runners on track to the finish. Laura was on hand with Flo for handing out finish tokens at the extended finish funnel. Ben ran the show as RD with thankfully no incidents or problems with the results, so plain sailing.

Great to have sign language support for the briefings (even with a temperamental speaker...) and lots of parkwalkers!

Welcome to Jodie, Julia, and Wojciech for your first GoodGym session!!

Today we were at Gorse Hill Studios community allotment, otherwise known as "Da Ruff Patch", to give the area a thorough weeding and clear up for others to use it and for growing the wide range of food already there.

Julia and Wojciech did a sterling job in the polytunnel, clearing out all the bindweed along one side and weeding around the tomatoes, beans, and basil (although one is now in a separate pot...) to leave it looking almost unrecognisable. After a long spell of warm weather the plants had taken off, with some growing toward the roof! A few frogs and caterpillars were found, photographed, and rehomed.

Jodie and Fanette concentrated on some of the raised beds to give the beans, carrots, kale, and salad some breathing space from the relentless bindweed, while Sanjeev took on the bindweed on the fence and many of the weeds along the border closer to the allotment entrance. Peter and Ben hacked away at whatever shouldn't be there, including lots of discarded metal and wood, lots of brambles, horsetail, bindweed, and sticky weed to free up the back corner while preserving the growing pumpkin and/or watermelon.

Very productive session with many hands making light work and lots of therapeutic and mindful weeding for the super seven. Time flew by and looking forward to being back again over the summer!