...and did we need them!

We were back at Sherwood Methodist Church for some follow up gardening maintenance as, despite the summer heatwave, things have just kept on growing!

Splitting in to two groups, Matt and Charlie channeled their inner lumberjack/tree surgeon and got stuck into some serious heavy duty pruning (not enough wheelie bins to contain their efforts!

Meanwhile, Rachel, Rachel, Leah, Florence and Peter (ably assisted by Peter's wife Jane) were clambering among the shrubs (and trying avoid the spiky plant things) to cut down the tall labernums and, yes, the spiky plant, so the church sign was visible again. With a lot of tamping down two wheelie bins were filled to the brim - how we got so much shrubbery in them is a mystery!

Thanks as always to Janice and Tony from the church for organising us so efficiently - we'll happily come back whenever you’ll have us!

Sherwood Community Centre invited us back for another evening of fun and varied tasks.

First up was some sweeping and leaf gathering. The Centre's café can't have dogs inside, but being on a popular dog-walking route, this is losing possible customers. However, there's a bit of space between the building and the car park that could be kitted out with some patio furniture for those who need or prefer to sit outside. We cleared a load of weeds that were growing through the gravel and swept up as many of the leaves as we could to make the space more welcoming.

Next, it was all hands on deck for the ol' lift and shift. There was a bike rack/planter out the front of the building that Louise wanted to use to create a barrier between the car park and the patio area. It took all of us and a moving dolly, but we managed it. Then realised we'd landed it backwards and had to turn it around.

Moving into the café, we switched some of the book storage around to make better use of the space.

Finally, we wheeled a massive planter in from the garden to the dance studio to protect it over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Our community garden tasks have been a little thin on the ground this summer, so we were very excited to be invited back to Arkwright Meadows this week.

Katie had a few different tasks for us, the first of which was rejigging their shop area. With the hot, dry weather we've had lately, a lot of the plants in it had seen better days and it was time to consolidate them to fewer shelves and move the empty units out of the way.

Next, we split into two teams. Those who weren't around for last week's bramble attack (Leah, Rachel and Charlie who was celebrating his tenth GoodGym task!) headed over to the area normally used by the children's group to clear some more of the spiky fellows and make the amphitheatre space safer for them. It was tough but satisfying digging them out and I think we made a lot of good progress. They definitely hadn't grown back to the levels we saw when we first came to the site a year or two ago.

Over on the other side of the gardens, Peter, Natalie and Nigel were on compost duty, moving the oldest compost into containers ready to be used and jumping up and down on the newer stuff to tamp it down. Good use of the GoodGym muscle, I'm sure you'll agree!

We were back at the ICCA tonight for some more railing painting.

It started a little differently, though, with Leah and Sarah meeting up for dinner at the ICCA's Dosti Club. Fully carb-loaded on noodles, chips and rice, plus a bit of mango kulfi where Natalie got in on the action, we headed down to get painting.

Charlie welcomed first-timer Jen, and we unpacked the kit. Leah finished off a tiny bit of the fiddly double gate we didn't get to last time while everyone else got cracking on the next section. We managed to get a decent chunk done in an hour, but we're seriously considering a hack Sarah had seen where you apply the paint with socks to get more done with a swipe.

So if you're joining us for one of these sometime soon, maybe raid your sock drawer on the way!