A wonderful, warm and sunny session with the fabulous Jill and volunteers at Woolston Station Garden. Chris, Steph and Mel were weeding and hoeing the bed along with Sophie and Nicola two local volunteers under the guidance of Patricia. Nicola was diligently sifting the homemade compost ready for us to scatter over the bed. Chris had a lovely last task to trim the buddleia as he does enjoy cutting back. A great hours work and we will be back later this month for another session.

I helped Andy move a bed and a sofa to make space for a hospital bed due to be installed in the living room, as his elderly mother is returning from hospital.

Great to welcome Grace to their first session this evening. Sorry we were not toadly successful! We also had Lucy and Duncan join us all the way from Portsmouth for their first toad patrol. We were optimistic despite the lack of rain, but also went ready for litter picking as expected a quiet night. A lot of the toads seem to have moved back to the woods already so the season is almost over for patrolling. We didn't spot any live toads, but found one dead one. We managed to collect one whole bag of recycling, one of other litter, and a few glass bottles too. I got very excited thinking I had found a rare magical pink newt...the unicorn of the newt world surely?! Alas it turned out to be a discarded rubber toy!

We have had a great few nights learning the ropes at the Colden Common and Wellow patrols this season. We might be able to squeeze another patrol in before the month is out if conditions are right, but otherwise we are really looking forward to next season. So make sure you sign up ready for next January if you want to get involved!

Had a great time raking dead leaves with FoSOC

We were back at the farm this evening for more lifting and shifting and log chopping and burning!

We moved lots of pallets and gates from the top of the farm to the bottom and then chopped lots of wood to be burnt down and turned into ash to help the crops.

We had lots of fantastic new faces getting stuck in and helping out, it's always nice to see new people!

We kept ourselves nice and warm around the fire too!

Unfortunately not all of the photos will upload 🙁 but here are the ones which will!

Tonight Lucy and I set off to see if we could deliver approximately 80 leaflets in 20 minutes. It started out feeling like we would never get through them all quick enough, but it wasn't long before we were down to the last few and with time to spare. We hope this will encourage some more people to participate in the Southampton marathon, half marathon, 10k and 5k races coming up in May and raise money for a local charity that supports disabled children and young people.