Wilson and I joined a gang of volunteers at a task organised by Final Straw and Portsmouth Uni as part of a project to reintroduce native oysters to the Solent.

Over 3 days, volunteers scrubbed 10,000 oysters to remove bio-hazards and pollutants, before the oysters will be introduced to the sea at Eastney to grow and reproduce.

We made new chums while scrubbing and learned new facts about how vital oysters are to marine health.

A novel and fun way to spend the day!

We had a bit of an unusual session this week, stretching our creative muscles rather than our physical ones. I think this was very much appreciated in the sudden cold snap - great numbers tonight!

Dave and Sinéad kept to Gym in GoodGym for us, with a couple of laps of the churchyard before joining us in the community centre to get creating.

We had beautiful table pieces, wreaths, orange peel tree hangings, hand-decorated garlands and some very intricate and mathematical giant baubles. Wilson showed true determination, and with the help of Maxine and baby Margaux completed their challenge! Katie and Vicki were another dream team, producing another masterpiece.

Special thanks to Judy for her creativity, resources and epic foraging skills for providing us with such a lovely task this evening. It was truly wonderful!

This evening we gave the hedge a good trim, sifted soil ready for seedlings and turned one of the compost bays 😊

We ventured out of the city this evening, with a slightly shifty-looking rendezvous in Sainsbury's car park. Walking and running groups made their way uphill to St Andrew's Church, where we met up with Chris, the church's volunteer gardener.

An impressive array of tools made their way from Chris' car to the compost area, where we set to work loading the contents of a make-shift compost heap into bags. This will allow Chris to build a functioning container for the compost, keeping things much tidier.

In her enthusiam, Judy somehow managed to upturn a whole shovel-full of compost over Ness, who in turn nearly took David's head off with a pitchfork. I wonder if I might need to work on my risk assessments! Wilson unearthed a 10ft python* whilst digging, which Ness kindly and carefully moved to a safe new home.

We certainly worked up an appetite, but luckily Val provided some tasty brownie bites to fuel our run back.

*it was a slow worm

We hit the bushes of Bevois Valley last night for a community litter pick. There were plenty of cans, bottles and plastic cups for us to pick. Sarah noticed lots of little glass bottles of Magnum Tonic Wine, this is a Jamaican alcoholic drink that claims to boost energy and, well… let’s just say vitality. Might explain why we found some other less savory items on our pick 😬

We filled 5 bin bags and got the thumbs up from a local taxi driver - it was a satisfying tidy up!