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!

Lisa and Sol joined the friends of Maidenhead Waterways for a Saturday morning session to help to clear river stream.

There was a last minute change of the location due to a high water level in Cookham. We ended up working at the Widbrook Common, which had been our usual location over last two months.

We split into two groups and headed to the furthest edge of Widbrook Common to clear tree branches clogging up the stream.

We worked from the bank with long rakes and pulled branches and weeds out to open up the stream. We worked our way back and tidied up where needed. We had our well earned tea-break in the meadow. Coffee and biscuits tasted so delicious in the countryside setting.

This marked the end of working on the Widbrook Common, as the bird nesting season will start and no more distractions intended to the wildlife.

Next sessions will be working in the town centre to improve the York stream.

An amazing 8 Goodgymmers gave up their Saturday afternoon to help prepare the Community Allotment for Spring and get it all spruced up for Theresa May's visit next week. We had a long list of tasks, so decided to divide and conquer. Angela and Rosie took on covering the raised bed frames with netting, and used their best sewing and patchwork skills to cover the frames to keep out the butterflies. Rachel, Gillian and Lisa weeded around the trees, raspberries, spinach and a couple of the beds. Meanwhile Sheila strimmed the grass Nicola and Matthew took on the compost area, moving the woody material to uncover some beautiful compost underneath. You could tell it was good stuff - it was full of wriggling pink worms. They used this to mulch around the newly- weeded areas. We were joined briefly by Daniel who passed by and came to join in - maybe he will join Goodgym in the future. Our last task was to dig a trial hole in an area that may be used for some fruit trees in the future, which Matthew and Nicola gamely took on. Once they had got past the bramble roots, they reported that the soil was quite easy to dig. We then discovered that this was Nicola's 100th Good Deed, which had crept under the radar. Congratulations, Nicola! Epic! We shall celebrate properly soon.

It was a nice clear morning to start the weekend with a Waterways session at the local Widbrook Common Stream.

The session started very positively with exchanging greetings as we pulled up the waders. Then Clara said: there is some stone in the boot and had to get out of waders again to get it out. She actually found Tesla keys (looked like a Tesla credit card to be honest) in one of wader's boot. Amy jumped into joy and screamed: my Tesla key!!

She had lost Tesla during her previous Waterways session.

Afterwards, we headed to the Widbrook stream and soon discovered that the meadow was flooded with the excess rain water and we had to walk through knee-deep water just to get to the starting point.

We relied on a pile of recently cut wood logs to put our bags and tried to establish where the firm gound stops and the stream bed starts.

Phil and Paul were wading in the stream and we helped from the river bank. The water flowed as did the conversations and laughs as we pulled the reeds out of the stream.

This felt like an adventurous session, where we are not quite sure where the safe ground is and it creates that feeling of what if we cannot get out of here?

At one point, Clara stepped a bit too far into the stream and started to get stuck in the mud. Amy was by her side and heard a very polite: Please can you help me?

This was the first Coffee break standing in the water and leveraging termos and biscuits on pallets positioned on the higher ground. Water logged Coffee break will certainly be a memory of 2024!!!

We reached the fence that marked the meadow's end and our task was completed for the day!

We slowly headed back across the flooded meadow and it felt as if the water level was even more higher than in the morning. Talk about that visual illusion!

Great turnout for our first 2024 Friday lunchtime litter pick! I was joined at Grenfell Park by Rachel, Juli, Sheila, Gurch, Jack, Jen, Anna, Steve, Jess, Tessa, Scarlett and Matthew. Great to see Gurch joining us for the first time. Meanwhile, Gillian, Georgeta, Celine, Sol and Diya tackled rubbish closer to their homes/work-places.

In and around Grenfell Park we found far more rubbish than we had expected. It was mostly bottles and cans, but we also found trousers, underwear, a drill, a bowl and spoon, a bicycle wheel, a shopping trolley, lots of old bank cards, a pound coin and even a twenty pound note!

We also had a lovely sociable time as we worked, catching up after the holidays, congratulating Sheila on her 500 (and two!?) good deeds, and planning the GoodGym water station at the Easter Ten race (put the 29th of March in your diary now).

Kudos to Jack, who wheeled the shopping trolley all the way back to the Maidenhead Community Centre and then onwards to Sainsbury's.

Georgeta, Gillian, Diya and Sol also found rich pickings in their neighbourhoods. Georgeta's most note-able finds were artificial flowers and a large broken plastic box, which she did well to carry to her bin. Gillian filled multiple bags and found a belt and pair of pants - possibly related? Diya was saddened by how much litter she found just a short distance from home - she was so sad that she didn't even take a selfie! Sol found a direct relationship between litter levels and closeness to the convenience store.

Well done team! Sad that there is so much litter out there, but we have made a big difference today.