I helped Mr S and his wife deal with a wisteria plant that had grown out of control. At first, I thought the job was to trim it into a reasonable shape. But as the stems were cut back, a different idea started taking shape in Mrs S's mind.

"Do you know someone who could take out this tree?" - Mrs S.
"So you don't want to keep it at all?" - Kash.
"I hate it. It took me three days to cut it back last time."
"Do you have a saw?"

The saw was available indeed. So was the ladder. I changed tactics, aiming to remove the tree. Sawing off the main stems would take me a few minutes, but Mrs S rightly raised concerns about the neighbours' garden.

"This is our tree, but it grows on the other side of the wall too. What if it falls on the neighbours' plots? They are growing veggies there."

The wisteria was extremely tangled, and there was no way I could just cut down the tree and hope everything would fall on Mr S's side. Half of the tree's crown grew on the neighbours' side, and half of those branches had made their way there through the ornamental holes in the wall.

I had to hop onto the ladder and work my way down from the top of the tree, making sure no cuttings ended up in the neighbours' garden — either ones cut that day or ones that might fall later from a branch I'd cut low and left to wither. From that height, I spotted that the neighbours across the wall must have embraced their part of the wisteria and hung a couple of lights or charms on its branches.

With all those discoveries, Mrs S and I decided against rushing to saw the tree down that day and instead collected the cuttings into five bags. We carried them to the front of the house and emptied them into a green bin. Even with me stamping down the green waste, there was no way it would all fit in the bin. Luckily, a neighbour from across the road rushed over to offer Mrs S some space in his wheelie bin.

No wonder Mrs S makes her neighbours such great allies!

It was already October, and the leaves on many of the trees on Horsenden Hill had turned golden, but everything else around us tried to tell us it wasn't really autumn yet. Short sleeves and sunglasses, rather than a rain jacket, were the right outfit for the mild and windless day at the community farm, where eight Ealing GoodGymers welcomed guests from GoodGym Hammersmith & Fulham and GoodGym Hounslow.

David, who joined us for his first Ealing session, was impressed by the farm's unique and peaceful character and gave us the all-too-familiar line about Perivale's hidden gem.

"I lived all my life in West London and didn't know this place existed!"

We’ve heard it many times, and we know that Horsenden likes to surprise those who eventually get to discover it.

Today's surprise on our way to the two assigned tasks was the new arrival in the horse meadow: Charlie the pony. Last month, we'd been creating a new paddock for him and his companion, Trixie. Since then, the meadow we'd cleared had been fenced off for protection, and new grass had already started to replace the areas cleared of brambles.

The October Horsenden session continued expanding the meadow up the hill. Half of the GoodGymers, the Bramble Team, took loppers, shears and silky saws, not only to cut back blackberries but also to saw through thick branches along the way.

Meanwhile, the other part of the gang, the Rubble Team, transported debris from the car park to fill the gaps in the eroded ditch near the canoe club shed. What we learned later from Ranger Jon Staples was that the idea of using rubble came from the military's riprap - a rocky, loose material laid in a way that helps protect shoreline structures.

The second part of Team Rubble's assignment was to spread mulch over the riprap that had already been laid. In the near future, when a hedge is planted above the rubble and decomposed woodchip, its roots, together with the rocks, will help protect the bank from further erosion, while the hedge will prevent canoeists and visitors from falling into the ditch.

Both teams did a fantastic chunk of hard work that will help the volunteer-led farm thrive. Later in the day, Elsa, the task owner, sent us a lovely message:

"Thank you so much to your team for all the hard work you did today. I don't know if you all realise how valuable it is to us."

If being recognised for impactful work wasn't enough, our team took an hour for an indulgent team lunch with pizza, local soft drinks and craft beer, then marvelled at the tiniest rodents in the whole of Europe - the harvest mice - at Horsenden's Mouse House.

Check our future sessions at Horsenden Farm here.

"Every session is different" is a GoodGym Ealing mantra, even for the same organisation. The changing seasons mean our partners' needs change too. To paraphrase someone or other famous who may have volunteered at Care4Calais with us:

"GoodGym is like a bag of donations. You never know what you're gonna get."

A month since our futile attempts to try and untangle overgrown tomato plants at Feeding Ealing, today we were doing something quite different. Preparing the raised beds for new planting and future crops. A big welcome to Emily, who joined us for her first GoodGym task, walking with the group from Horsenden Farm 🥳🎉. Give her a cheer! 📣

Emily and the others must've wondered what they'd let themselves in for when our task owner, Joseph, asked "are you ready for some graft?". He then led us to a huge pile of manure. From there, we were shown the raised beds that needed to be refreshed before new planting started.

"Where did that [big pile of manure] come from?" - GoodGymer
"From a really big cow" - Joseph

The team tried different ways to organise themselves to:

1. Get manure into wheelbarrows
2. Move the wheelbarrows to the raised beds
3. Tip the manure out and spread it
4. Mix the manure into the existing soil

Joseph wasn't wrong. It was heavy work, from filling the wheelbarrows through to turning the soil. On the upside, it wasn't as stinky as some people feared. Give that giant cow the Nobel prize for Chemistry!

"I've never seen manure that doesn't smell" - Therese

It was a real work out for the team. We managed to fertilise 11 of the raised beds, some of which'll have beans growing in them soon 🫘. Joseph was really impressed, as he always is with what GoodGym achieve with Feeding Ealing.

"You've done more today than 40 people from Tata managed" - Joseph

Big praise for 6 GoodGymers and Therese's husband. 🙌💪

Back to see Mr T and his skeleton we put together last week was sitting on the coach. He was expecting some small one this week, but they didn't spook up. They ghosted him. He is keen on getting his flat ready for Halloween. As he loves films, we talked of the DVD films he has and he said that he watched Scrooged with Bill Murray from the 80's again..ghost alert!!

Lets see next week if ha has more decorations up.

Since my fellow GoodGymer Alan had beaten me to signing up for this week's Friday night shopping mission for Mr G, I sought consolation in the humble weeding task for the same gentleman at the same time.

I met Alan at Mr G's, and all three of us had a brief, casual chat about the afterlife, the karmic cycle and the prospect of reincarnation as a cat.

Then I promptly got on with my gardening job, as the days were getting shorter - I had about 30 minutes before the sun went down. The front garden was small, so I quickly pulled out the weeds, swept up most of the leaves and helped Mr G put his new houseplant in a pot.

I didn't get to catch a glimpse of the sunset, but I did catch a glimpse of Alan returning with the shopping - an equally wonderful sight that made me think life's good - before I ran back home.

Our litterpicker rebels were at it again this month and scopped rubbish there and then in the borough. But isn't it nice to receive some recognition from the public when you are picking up rubbish. Janet was pleased to get a nice thank you from a passing by cyclist when she was clearing rubbish along the canal near Hanwell. The Egyptian geese nearby might have been thinking the same but we will never know. Gracie mille to all and hopefully you do get thank you on your litter picking missions