It was another busy morning at the Baby Bank. Having been closed for half term, it was super-busy with donations coming in. Karen and Caroline had to work hard second-checking clothes which had been first-sorted by a volunteer corporate team. Sheila and Carol were doing a primary sort on the school uniform donations which had been piling up for a while. We got rid of many bags-full which didn't make the grade and left the rest neatly in boxes ready for someone else to second-check and put away

The Friends of Oaken Grove Park are creating a Wildlife pond in the Nicholas Winton Garden. GoodGymmers have spent many happy (and smelly!) sessions helping out in the past, so we jumped at the chance to help them create a wildlife habitat. The first job was to shovel the shingle which had been put in the empty pond, so that it formed a good slope up to the edge of the pond. Then we had a mountainous (8 tonnes) of topsoil that need to be shovelled into barrows and tipped into the pond. This then had to be raked to cover the shingle. Christine and Rowena were champion rakers and treaders, while Sol and Sheila shovelled their hearts out We all had a really good workout, and will probably feel the effects tomorrow morning! Together with 4 other volunteers we managed to transfer the whole of the topsoil mountain to the pond area - we completed in a morning a task that was predicted to take 2 days! Taskowner Dave was delighted with what had been achieved. Great work by everyone, and welcome to Rowena to her first GoodGym mission - we hope to see you again soon

Four enthusiastic Goodgymers set about tidying the school grounds in Eton Wick. Juli and Chris moved a large pile of wood chips onto beds to help with weed control whilst Sol and Angela trimmed bushes and ivy so the area was more accessible. We then celebrated Juli's huge achievement of 250 good deeds with an amazing poem (thank you Sophie!) a lovely medal ( thanks Sheila!) and of course cake! Well done Juli! Here's to the next 250!

Literally a spot! Ms. M's garden is severely overgrown and she requested us to tackle the rogue blackberry bushes by the fence. We chose the spot for maximum impact - where it was starting to go over to the neighbour's side.

We took off as much of the prickly branches as we could but it'll certainly take repeat visits just to get it under control.

It certainly was a gorgeous sunny morning to be out in the garden. Chatty Ms. M and her 3 little dogs were happy* with the company as well.

*debatable. The oldest one was certainly wary but didn't want to be left out of new human sighting!

Sol, Mick and Sheila joined 3 other volunteers at Ray Mill Island to continue building our dry hedge. We were grateful that the weather was dry this week, and we made great progress! Everyone knew what they were doing, and we hammered in stakes (given nice pointy ends with Mick's newly-sharpened axe), packed the area with brush wood and bound it all together with flexible branch lengths. We were all pleased with our progress and look forward to the wildlife moving in

Its a hat trick of visits to the Green Skills Library, hosted by the wonderful Donna. Mike was already hard at work filing down some wooden formers which are being re-purposed as display shelves. Sol and Sheila were soon put to work painting primer onto the shelves. Meanwhile Rachel, Jen, Angela and Roberta brought out their creative sides with a spot of decoupage. They glued patches of fabric onto baubles rescued from the Nicholsons Centre before it was demolished. Their full beauty will be revealed once the glue has dried clear. These will be used to decorate a tree at the St Luke's Christmas Tree Festival in December, and then sold off for much-needed funds. There was much fun and laughter - we love visiting the Green Skills Library - it's so inspirational!