As the September equinox is approaching this week, the days noticeably shrunk, and we officially entered the headtorch season for group runs! We still hit a double-digit number of attendees tonight, thanks to glorious comebacks from Caroline and Cristina 🎉

This Tuesday we came back to Cultivate's new plant nursery at Popesfield Allotments. The trees, shrubs and Herbaceous perennials were still on the pallets where we transported them last month. But would they stay there for long?

No spoilers!

When the runners: Caroline, Cristina, Kash, with backmarkers: Sevan and Steph Ducat arrived at the site, they found the task owner Romina and the GoodGymers: Mike, Madhan and Milly already working the shovels and wheelbarrows to move the gravel from the front gate to the space in front of Cultivate's shed. With more reinforcements arriving (Divya on his bike and Chris running individually), the team was split into two.

People who had been made redundant on the gravel job sought new opportunities on a different project. The next day, another volunteer group was supposed to replace a large membrane covering the ground with... even larger one! There was a problem: the membrane was covered in pallets that, in turn, were covered in plant pots. You know where am I going with this, right? Relocating the plant pots take two! And by plants I don't mean a tiny fern or a little, cute shrub. We are talking trees - the heavy, unwieldy sort - a perfect challenge for us.

Good news! No one lost any eyes when manipulating trees

When the gravel, trees in pots and pallets moved their places, Romina realised that it was difficult to continue working in the darkness and asked us whether we had time for another task. We got our head torches out and were ready to migrate more stuff. This time it would be dried grass from a pile of soil, branches and hay. We surrounded the stack like vultures and loaded the wheelbarrows with hay. We thought that only the dried grass was what Romina was after. Only after she explained the purpose of moving that material, we understood the idea: a bonfire! Anything burnable, not just grass, would go on the new stack 🔥 We transported branches and planks found in the pile to their (final) destination, then parked the wheelbarrows.

Lightning up the bonfire unfortunately was not in the programme for tonight. As it was a windy day, we decided that a cosy pub would be a perfect place to rest and get warm after the session.

Next week we are back at Elthorne Park for an autumn burdock bashing!

A lovely evening down by the Grand Union Canal where were back for another round of clearing around young trees. Our planned group run will happen on another day. This clearing helps the trees to get sunlight, rain and nutrients until they are strong enough to thrive on their own. We were greeted by two trustees of the William Hobbayne Charity who had come down specifically to thank us for our help - how nice is that?!

That's right, put a sock in the bin bag, when you find a couple of sets out litter picking on Ealing Common! The best news of the night was that we avoided the rain - hurray! The intrepid GoodGym Ealing team skipped along Ealing Common, we even got a clap from a man in a pub - now how about that! And thanks to Claire for the pun.

(oh, and we sent for pizza afterwards, well you have to treat yourself sometimes, don't you?!)