I received a warm welcome from Garth and Denise from Friends of Portswood Rec as I joined them for a pruning party. It was a stunning, sunny autumnal morning so all the colours of the trees looked magnificent. I set to work giving the overgrown hornbeam hedge a trim which was great fun with my ratchet loppers. Then I moved onto another overgrown lime tree which also needed a trim. Some of the offcuts were put to good use for a new bug hotel. We filled two bags full and were rewarded with tea/ coffee and biscuits. I will be back for more fun with my loppers soon.

Well it was a very satisfying task today joining with Phil and The Friends of Peartree Green Nature Reserve to clear out the ever persistent Virginia Creeper. There was a larger than usual group as we were joined by some Geo Caching people. I certainly enjoyed getting in amongst the trees cutting out as much as I could under the able eye of Phil who organises the sessions. They are running a Fungus Foray on the 2nd November which is for all the family and anyone interested in learning more about them.

A last minute litter pick at a new location tonight. Thanks to Justin who suggested Mansel Park. It wasn’t long before we’d filled a bag of cans for the air ambulance appeal and several bags with litter. We were most impressed by the fancy litter bin in the park that literally ate the litter! We were joined by Toto the dog at the start who supervised our efforts. Then when Toto’s shift was up the local fox population took charge. It was perhaps even more exciting as I had just spoken to a friend who said they had NEVER seen a fox in the UK!

This evening the task was split between two sites. Eliie, Chris, Finn and Wilson finished a few jobs at the planters, starting with a quick litter pick and then cutting back bigger stems and pulling out more of the wild garlic bulbs.

Sarah and Helen went with Holly to the little orchard at the end of the road. This is an area that was popular with fly tipping and Holly a member of the local resident association asked the council if they could adopt it as part of the wilder scheme. It is now a lovely small green space and we were on hand to give it a good weeding and a dig over.

And why the title??? Lovely Helen ran to the task and got stung by a bee on the way..... and a large fluffy bumble bee was buzzing about the orchard whilst we were trying to weed, and Wilson also unexpectedly but proudly got to wear a 350 good deed cape.... can you beeelieve it!

Wow! what an evening helping light up the streets of Southampton helping marshal Cancer Research UKs Shine night walk, a 10k night walk raising money and awareness.

We had a bumper crop of goodgymers which split into two groups on two different marshal points - Ellie, Abby and Justin were on one point and Steph, Julie (who joined us for her first task!) and myself were placed outside the duke of wellington pub accompanied by live music.

There were 1600 walkers and several spirits to keep high. We lit ourselves up brightly and spent many hours cheering clapping and dancing to lift everyones spirits.

Down at our marshal point we had several shouts of (best marshals tonight!) and also commentary that we must have been in the pub for a pint we were that jovial!

Once the last walkers had come through the team got stuck in helping collect and remove course signage. It was an amazing evening and my face is still aching from all the smiling. We look forward to coming back next year!

It was finally our time to shine (or the buses turn to shine) when it came to bus cleaning tonight! After a slightly unsuccessful attempt in winter due to quite literally freezing conditions we were hopefully tonight would be a triumph. Now the weather had other ideas and there was a storm alert issued shortly before we were due to start. Fortunately the storm held off so we remained dry-ish apart from Justin clearly trying to soak Abby chucking a bucket of water over a bus! We should have used Lauren to clean the hard to reach places as she had wings and not one pair but two! Well done Lauren on reaching your 100th task this evening with a double whammy of do gooding. Until next time Rose Road :)