Last night's task was a true workout, carrying sleeper after sleeper down to the bottom of the garden, ready to be used to construct a stage for the annual Olden Community Garden music festival.

It took 6 GoodGymer's to lift and lug each sleeper, and a lot of good communication and coordination to avoid any disastrous injuries. We didn't quite fulfill Charles' high ambition of relocating the entire pile, but after shifting 9 sleepers, I think it's fair to say we'd all had a good work out and felt pretty pleased with ourselves. I can certainly feel it in my arms today!

Great work to Jennifer for getting stuck in on her first session (welcome!). Aside from some seeing many faithful GG Islington regulars, it was great to meet Denzel from GG HQ, and Ernestas, local coucillor and long-time GG-er.

See you at Finsbury Park next week!?

Had a really nice catchup with Ms F this evening. I gave her an insight into what I’ve been up to at work. She talked me through a trip she has coming up. In terms of the shopping the cheese counter was still out of action but got everything else. Had nice chats with the lady behind the fish counter and the lady on the till.

A really solid turnout for a Monday evening as 10! of us went gardening in Stroud Green. Quite a few ran from the stadium which is particularly impressive. Eslam was on good form as he talked through all the recent activity in the garden. It was a case of divide and conquer here as half the group shoveled compost into a wheelbarrow while the others offloaded it into a new heap. We got the task done with time to spare which is testament to the turnout. A good mix of old and new.

Had a lot of fun chipping in at Graham Street Park with some composting. It's a lovely park of town by the canal. Nice to see some familiar faces as we worked as a close knit team to work away at the two small compost heaps. We had a little bit of a scare early on as we were threatened to be kicked out by a park keeper but we managed to negotiate a bit more time to finish the job. A proper workout with plenty of forking and shoveling to be had. Thanks Eslam for having us and I'm sure we'd happily return if there's more to do in the coming months.

We were back at Sunnyside Community Gardens to finish off last week's compost turning. Taking inspiration from the recent Winter Olympics, we applied avalanche rescue snow-removal techniques to moving compost: using a "V" formation with three rows of diggers passing dirt back to the next, forming a nice efficient chain effect.

Great team effort - we were able to complete the compost bay that had totally defeated us last week.

Now it's over to the worms to do work their magic...