It is the fruity season! after picking 200 kilos of Worcester Pearmain apples with the lovely folks at Abundance on Sunday, we joined forces with Abundance again and moved on to a pear tree which was cropping one month earlier than usual!

We first picked the windfalls before grabbing the pickers to collect the fruit higher up the tree, a "fruitstrating" task as the pears were eluding our efforts.

But resistance is "fruitile" and we managed to save a total of 12kg, with a crate of the best being donated to Broomhall community centre who host a community meal every Wednesday.

A "pearfect" way to use the produce!

Goodgymmers Annie, Ines, Tim and Celine met up with national cycke network champions Sustrans Craig, Gerry, William and John to attack super hot grot spot at the corner of maltreated Maltravers road and Cricket Inn.

We bagged up an incredible amount of rubbish in no time at all - many hands holding litterpickers make light work!

Rachel, Annie and I joined 11 members of the Abundance project to help harvest 4 apple trees from a public orchard near the Millennium gallery so that they can be distributed to good causes and saved from waste.

We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are virtually perfect and third which are not donated but saved by some volunteers for cooking. Volunteers also get to take seconds home!

It was a superb turnout of volunteers on a gorgeous day. Many hands make light work and together we picked 151kg of first, 43kg of seconds and 13kg of 3rd - over 200kg in under 2 hours is an incredible harvest!

Four hours, two tip runs and I felt like I've not made the slightest bit of difference to the persons' garden. This should never have been allowed to go ahead with just 1 person doing it, and the person I was there to help had been given completely unrealistic expectations about what I was there to do or could accomplish.

While I'm at it, I also think it's completely inappropriate to take pictures of peoples' gardens and houses that we're there to help sort out! Elderly people are typically very proud and often unwilling to ask for help. The last thing they want is some idiot taking a picture of their garden whilst it looks a mess, and then putting that photo on the Internet! Seriously, what are you thinking with this, why are photos mandatory for me to even submit this! Have another picture of my cat.

Tonight we were tasked with inspecting the various types of fish passes on the weirs of the River Don for the Don Catchment Rivers Trust (DCRT). This is to make sure that fish are free to complete their migrations upstream unencumbered. The main species to make use of these are salmon, trout, and grayling, along with dace, chub, and barbel. The passes also help eels and other fish species navigate weirs that were previously impassable. The data and photographs we record are used by the DCRT to assess which passes need maintenance. Thankfully, on this occasion all of the passes we inspected were fully functioning with no obvious damage.

A fin-tastic time was had by all

We managed to survey three weirs- Lady's Bridge, Walk Mill, and Burton Weir- before running into a blocked section of path, which I thought, wrongly, that we would be able to negotiate. We did discover that this section was blooming with blackberries and rosehips, if any foragers are looking for a tip-off. The fenced-off section is absolutely thriving with no foot traffic passing through.

The following is the gathered inspection data for each of the passes. Lady's Bridge: Clear at top. Clear at bottom. Flowing freely. No damage visible or debris present. Walk Mill: Clear at top. Clear at bottom. Flowing freely. No damage visible or debris present. Burton Weir: Clear at top. Clear at bottom. Flowing freely. No damage visible or debris present.

Storm Floris was blowing, the rains had raged earlier, but the sun was now making an appearance and a "live and picking" team of hardened Goodgymers braved it outside to tackle the litter in the Grey to Green park and cycle path by the river Don.

To celebrate 300 good deeds, Céline was entrusted with the much coveted Sheffield GoodGym Cape.

Genial Gerry from Sustrans welcomed and tooled us up, and away we went into the Sustainable Urban Drainage System that are planted with beautiful flowers in bloom, pickers in hands and rubbish bags blowing like sails, buds in the SUDS!

Annie, right arm in a sling and picker in the left, undeterred by a recent gruesome fall from her bike, was determined to gather all the drinking cans - an amazing CAN DO attitude!

Both teams from GoodGym and Sustrans, all together, we managed to pick our way through all the beds along the river, and a real tower of rubbish bags was collected.

We were even treated to a welcome slice of chocolate cake from Gerry at the end, we got our just desserts, before heading for a meal at Sheffield plate to celebrate together.