On Easter Saturday we joined Annie to do some weeding at the Hervey Road garden.

We set to work, digging up the weeds on the long border and getting yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full. We discussed Laura's upcoming trip to Mali and her rather grown up job out there - we will miss you Laura and look forward to hearing about it on your forays back to London! And Arthur interjected very regularly that he didn't want to weed anymore and wanted to go to the playground, poor little thing.

After a decent job on the long border we headed to the wildflower garden and witnessed Marta and Richard's magnificent dead hedging coming into its own. Here Annie patiently showed us what were plants and what were weeds and we got to work filling at least another 3 bags full. The conversation remained genial but little did we know, the morning was about to take a sinister turn.

It happened just as we were collecting our belongings and getting ready to go. Cat pulled a present out of her bag for Arthur. A little white chocolate chick. Awww sweet, "what a treat". And amazingly it wasn't at all melted. The first thing that happened was, inexplicably panicking that it would suddenly melt in my hands, I said "let's dig in" and promptly pulled it's head off. It's baffling really - as if I don't experience on a daily basis the things a 3 year old finds distressing 🥺 The wailing started. Quiet at first and then a crescendo to the dreaded high pitched banshee shriek. Every parent's nightmare and at which point I saved the day by stuffing a bit of the head into his mouth and he realised the decapitated bird was in fact, very yummy. More was consumed and we were all revelling in this moment of tranquility and sweetness when Cat piped up, "does it taste like chicken?" 🤯

Witty and sadistic in equal measure. Certainly disarming - in fact I forgot to get a group photo, so thrown was I by this turn of events.

A happy ending though. All the chocolate remained in his tummy even after the turns on the roundabout and we all trundled off to the rest of our weekends. Good job team!

We've got woodchipping at St Richard's on Tuesday and we're back at Prince Philip on Wednesday - hope to see you there.

Until next time!

Well, annoyingly I thought I uploaded this last week and have realised I had written it but not in fact uploaded it 😬 Can you remember what we did last Wednesday? If not, hopefully the excellent pun has jogged your memory

Last week Marta led us rather beautifully on our first run of the year to Hervey Road and the community garden.

Our task was to replenish the sticks protecting the lavender from being trodden on by unsuspecting drivers when they're getting things out of their car boot. At the beginning of our session there was a row of lavender with sticks scattered around and at the end all the lavender had sticks keeping them safe (and holding them up), safe from those pesky trainers. We even managed a bit of weeding and filled three bags of alkanet.

Job well done team and thank you Marta who has passed the fitness leader assessment with flying colours!

Next week we're back for a naval college start and run to St Richards

Until next time!

It was a filthy day as Good Gym returned to Hervey road. Two runners having been blown all over the place at parkrun were undeterred in their desire to help at this lovely little green space. We were soon met by Annie, our lovely task leader for the day, and put to work. And the day’s task was planting grass seeded with wildflowers, taking the plugs of grass and planting them within the existing grassy areas. 40 plugs needed to be planted and 40 plugs were planted before the wind blew us all back to Charlton.

Hervey Road gardens in Blackheath is proving a popular destination for Good Gym and for the second time in two days three of us turned up to help out at this lovely little park. And it was a special occasion as it was the first task for the wonderful Deanna (welcome Deanna, hope you enjoyed it and looking forward to seeing you on many more tasks). The task for the day was a mixture of brute force and artistic skill, with the group taking turns to clear the path, drill holes in the earth, hammer in stakes and, finally, intricately weave branches between the stakes to create a lovely fence, to better segregate the path from planting areas. And we were so efficient, after an hour of so we’d managed a good 10 metres of fencing and we could leave happy in the knowledge of a task well done.

On a slightly grey, but thankfully dry, November morning, three keen GoodGym-ers arrived at the lovely community garden at Hervey Road Sports Field. This is one of our regular task locations, and over the last few years we have seen the garden develop and flourish.

Our first task for this morning was to cover the central bed with cardboard sheets, then lay an even layer of mulch over the top. This will break down over time and provide loads of nutrients to the soil below.

We made light work of that, so swiftly moved onto the far more challenging task of continuing the construction of a 'dead hedge' fence - a brilliant way to mark out the flower beds with an organic, maintenance-free, bug-friendly border.

Dividing the work between us, we found the edge of the grown over path, measured out the correct spaces, drilled holes for the stakes, hammered them in to keep them secure, then finally wove thin branches back and forth through them to create the fence.

After an hour we had made great progress, and had a good workout - well done team!

It was back the Hervey Road today for lots of lovely Good Gymers, where a garden and wildflower area is slowly being created alongside the sports fields. The sun was threatening to come out but earlier rains had softened the ground from concrete-like (our last mission there) to quite soft, and there were new jobs to be done.

Today the team broadly split into two, with one group diligently removing the thistles and other weeds, and the other uncovering the old path, which had become quite overgrown, and laying down new chippings. Many thistles were found including some extremely large specimens and multiple bags were soon full of these pesky weeds. The pathfinding was slower, with care needed to ensure that we didn’t go beyond what could be covered with new bark but, despite this, around 10 metres was refreshed and the new path almost followed the route of the old one.

All that remained after that was some very fine weeding to separate the last few unwanted plants from a dense area of more valuable ones before a chat with Annie and Richard, the wonderful organisers, after which we left the garden with it looking mush refreshed