Well tonight was certainly a rather warm evening for GoodGym Brum, so it was great to have a gardening task!

It was lovely to meet Yvette for her first GG group run, I don't think you could have picked a better evening, that's for sure!

We met Josie, from the JQ Trust and headed to the cemetry. Our job was to chop down some buddleia which apparently is loved by butterfly's, but not very good for them! Hence why we became butterfly Personal Trainers for the night. In small groups the buddleia was chopped down, then dragged to a pile (see picture with the group in front of a pile of it). Once done the walking group headed back with Josie and the runners got running!

Liam led the group on a 4k run taking in the Soho Loop, continuing to Brindley Place, then back to 1000 Trades. Done for another week and everyone certainly deserved a cold drink of some description.

We returned to complete the pond at Oasis Foundry. I got a surprise seeing Mahnaz as we had met before at my running sessions in Handsworth Park. This was the first time she had met most of the goodgymers in attendance though, so she gave a lot of reassurances when she mentioned her background in a gardening apprenticeship.

We had some time to catch up as we waited for Jake from the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust to arrive. When he did, the others got a brief about what we wanted to achieve, then we got all the tools together and got started.

It was great to see how much Ryan had cleared out in the time he stayed on Monday. It really helped us. I began by breaking up the ground with the heavy fence pole while the rest of the group got on with shovelling soil, and lots of bricks, from the area. Tousif joined me as there was an extra pole today, and soon we were digging out what seemed to be an old fireplace. Jake was thinking creatively about what to do with the bricks and excess soil, creating a bee mound with the soil and lining the fire pit under the shelter with the bricks. Myself, Annie and Mahnaz were then asked to take another layer of turf away, around the circumference of the pond, which he would use to keep the liner in place. This gave Annie a chance to see how easy Jake made it look, and she was able to do a good impression of how difficult me and Miriam made it look on Monday.

Soon enough, we had the shelf layer completed, and Jake was happy when he checked his spirit level. So we all cracked on with digging out another couple of feet into the middle section. As we were starting to hit some of the softer soil, it turned 12 and I had to run off to the other community mission. However, Tousif, Mahnaz and Liam stayed on as the rain began to pour and managed to dig through the mud in order to get the pond liner down.

Hopefully we will see the pond come to life soon as we return to maintain the wildlife area. We love it already and the children at the school are certainly going to as well.