Oopsies, someone forgot to confirm the task with CYC Rachael, so there was no chicken wire and no Rachael (my bad). So after a quick phone call we had permission to weed the wildlife area instead. The gallant 5 weeded by hand in the drizzle and cold for half an hour, before calling it a day. Well every little helps! (I'll be sure not to have egg on my face next time!) Thanks team!

Stuart at Rowntree Park had a list of jobs for us in the garden area behind the café. Myself and Michal emptied a metal shed, moved it to the top of the garden then refilled it, whilst John reorganised a larger shed to accommodate a trolley and various other items to keep them dry. Jane and Elle created a small raised bed to accommodate some bare-root trees which involved some moving of heavy bags of soil and digging. Several tables and shelving units were moved around to create a more workable space, bags of sand and compost were decanted into silver bins and Lucy pushed some rocks uphill! We certainly got a lot done in less than an hour.

Four of us braved the cold wind and rain to help Rachael from the City of York Council Environmental Team at West Bank Park. Our job was to neaten the edges of the rose garden and armed with half-moon spades we set to work, closely watched by Joey and Kali 🐶 who didn't seem to mind the rain at all. Jenna got started on a neighbouring section and flagstone path and the rest of us joined her to help finish off. We filled several very heavy bags of wet turf and mud and left these for later collection. After a good sweep, in the words of Norbert the garden robot, we left the whole area looking a lot more "neat and tidy" unlike ourselves who were muddy and soggy!

Despite tonight's original task for tonight having been completed last night, we managed to sort a replacement task litter pick around Water End and Poppleton Road as Ed had noticed lots of litter there. We split off in different directions in pairs with several groups heading for the area around the RSPCA, others to Millenium Green and a couple heading further down Poppleton Rd. By the end of the hour we had lots of litter in our bags. Jane and Paul had a hopeful look for the aurora on the way back but it proved trickier to see than the litter of which there was plenty, some of which larger than others!

Luckily there was no pitter -patter and not too bitter, so we twisted sisters got stuck into the rotten matter, chippy tatters and bottled splatters with our litter pickers. There was plenty of natter chatter and twitter titters, spurring on our furtive flicker through the back street scatter for more canned liquor and spoils of the picknicker! Before our load was a splitter, we had bagged four big hitters and it was time to dump the lot for the rubbish binners. We hoisted up our better litter picker kits and quit!

Five hi-viz GoodGym Yorkies met on a cold but bright Thursday morning for a litter pick. Bland Lane is a hotspot for litter, especially bottles of alcohol (mostly vodka) and drinks cans and today didn't disappoint. After only 35 minutes we'd collected a whopping 10 bags of very heavy rubbish - with a water pistol included! We left the area looking so much better and were thanked by several passers-by.