At the All Saints Church Garden today, Ami and I were tasked with weeding each with our own patch. Mel found some Lemon verbena and wild garlic plus a large bush with flowers and a beautiful scent, but no-one knew the name unfortunately. The tomato plants put in last week are thriving and in the last week onions, peppers, strawberries have also been planted. Ami after some weeding helped to put in some flowers, and Mel struggled to get some of the more established weeds out, managing to bend one of the forks! But succeeded n the end. There is still a lot of weeding and planting out to do. With two huge trees giving plenty of shade and protection from any sun or rain, it's a very tranquil and peaceful place to be.

Nick, Ami and I helped with the ongoing clearance of the garden at All Saints church.

It was an international group of gardeners, with representatives from Turkey, Czech Republic and Iraq, amongst others. And we learnt from each other: Fatima and Peter both recognised the lime trees in the garden and knew that the flowers can be used to make a tea, which is soothing for sore throats.

Ami did a great job of weeding under some of the rose bushes, and had scratches to prove it! Nick cleared around the lime trees and filled the compost bins. I did a lot of chatting and dead-headed the roses!

Welcome back to Maura, Angela and Tony. It felt a bit like the early days of GoodGym today!

Lynn and I made up the five intrepid pickers.

We met up with volunteers from Friends without Borders, Wilder Portsmouth and Southsea Beach Clean to take a stroll up towards Eastney and clean up the beach.

The usual items were found as well as a buried dirty nappy 🤮 (welcome back Angela!), a whole packet of crayons and three different plastic figurines (a reindeer from Frozen, paw patrol dog & one of the Incredibles) - these were all in different places so probably from different people!

A few bags filled, we headed home for some well earned lunch.

Well it wasn't a wash out but we did get very wet upon arrival to All Saints Church. We had a very warm welcome from Anita and fellow volunteers. First task was to assemble a flat-packed garden storage box before the rain disintegrated the instructions. Second task - weed removal. We all got stuck in and incredibly muddy! Finished off with a cuppa and a cake!

Lynn & Rosie joined me to discover the hidden treasure of the All Saints church garden.

While the traffic crawled past into Portsmouth, with beeping horns and occasional shouts of road rage, we enjoyed the tranquility of this oasis, with the sound of birds enjoying the tree cover.

We joined Anita and other volunteers to continue preparing beds for planting. The 3 GoodGymers sorted out the compost bins and loaded in the green waste from last week, as well as clearing weeds from the paths and in the garden area which is likely to be adopted by the Brownies.

I was lucky enough to be given a gentle warning by a bee to stay away from their nest in the compost heap and was welcomed to the garden by a kindly bird pooing down the back of my GG t.shirt!

From next week, asylum seekers will join us to garden and to improve their English.