This was the last of the tasks in the busy first four days of January. It was great to meet Dan and Jaime who had recently moved to York and had previously been involved in Goodgym in London. Dan and David started by replacing the nets on the basketball hoops before joining everyone else to cut back the ivy on the top if the wall. We also cleared and tidied some of the beds around it. By the end we had cleared a lot of the ivy back from the top of the wall to prevent it damaging the wall.

Despite the very soggy weather we got stuck into the tasks at the community garden. Ben had a tough job sweeping the wet leaves off the paths, Ellie dug up brambles and cleared the beds and Laura cut back the roses and cleared the beds. Callie, Ellie and Ben's dog, started to dig a hole which gave us an idea. Soon we had her joining in the task by digging the weeds and roots out of the bark chip in the play area. She finished by showing us her dog agility skills through the train.

The main task was to clear the leaves from the basketball court and paths to stop them getting slippery. We started by lifting up a couple of the leaf bins to see if there was any leaf mulch that could be dug onto the beds. There was a small amount of older matter but it was mostly very dry. Becca dug a wheelbarrow full of the best bits into the beds. Amy and Laura started by emptying and resetting two of the leaf bins. Sam and Barbara swept the basketball court and David swept and cleared around the drains and attempted to unblock them of soil. Whilst all this was going on Jane pruned the two large apple trees, the blackcurrant bush and the Jasmine. Once the basketball court was mostly clear we managed to clear most of the leaves from the paths and start clearing some of the beds before the end of the hour.

We were joined by a few local residents to help keep Holgate CommunityGarden looking good. We cleared a lot of weeds from the long bed and planted some tulip bulbs. We also planted crocus and daffodil bulbs around the trees that we had cleared around last month. Jane used the ladder to the all of the remaining apples down and we left them any that weren't claimed in one of the beds for people to take.

Despite the slightly lower numbers for tonight's group run we had lots to celebrate. First we welcomed Emily to her first Goodgym session, despite her only arriving in York a week ago. We celebrated Abigail and Claire both achieving 200 good deeds. We celebrated Rebecca being crowned August's Goodgymer of the month, having completed lots of Goodgym tasks in her first few months since joining, including some Goodgym tourism. We also congratulated Emma on completing the Vale of York half marathon and Liv and Mia on completing the Great North Run. (We also thought there may also have been a few other York Goodgymers doing a race at the weekend and having a few drinks along the way.) Finally we celebrated World Ampersand Day by going round and naming our favourite food and drink pairings worthy of the & symbol. After all the congratulations we headed to the task at Holgate Community Garden. We did two main jobs, cutting a circle of grass and weeds away around the trees and tidying the beds nearest the road. Abigail, Leanne and Jenna joined in once they had finished staging a teddy birth for Abigail. As her due date is in three days we were hoping that we didn't have a real birth to contend with. Claire and Laura Bennett went down to the Holgate Allotments and brought back two barrows of bark chip for putting on top of the soil circles around the trees. Imran and Jenna did a great job clearing all the brambles on the beds. We managed to complete both tasks before doing some training related fitness, including squats while we were stopped for leaves on the line, lunges for shovelling coal, creating tunnel arches for the other team's train to go through and then finishing with all aboard the train for a photo and some delicious chocolate and courgette cake from Claire before running back to base.

We started by splitting into three groups, team rake, team weed and team compost. The council had recently cut the grass so David ad Rebecca managed to rake and take a lot of the cuttings from the main part of the garden to the compost heap. Cara and Laura rescued the compost bins which were spilling out in a big heap as the panels had come off the front. We cleared all the compost from the front of the bins, reset the log walkway and used the logs to wedge the fronts back on where they were too warped to slot in properly. The weeds were also coming up in the beds again so Claire and Paul managed to tidy them up and take out some of the large plants that had fallen over. Rebecca, Cara and Laura then helped out with the weeding while David finished the raking.