A lunch break to help with The Open Table Christmas lunch. Starting with chatting to familiar faces before getting down to the serious business of clearing and vacuuming. There were lots of helpers today so it was all done fairly quickly and if course Henry was there to lend a hand.

It was great to stop by and help tidy up after The Open Table community lunch today as hadn't been there for some time. Also great to get out during a break.

With a delivery to sort and tables to clear, of course having Henry (the vacuum) join me was the highlight (is my favourite job).

Hope to be back again soon.

On such a chilly night, it was good to have an indoor task to keep us warm for our group session. Abby set us to work sanding, taping, wiping and painting some of the church skirting boards, to match the newly painted walls. Although we were a small group, we whizzed through the task in record time and Jon even managed a bit of a lie down. We had to admit the results were simply brush-taking (although we didn't want to get too emulsion-al).

Last night our trusty crew tackled a truly rewarding task, proving once again that a little sweat and a lot of smiles can make a big difference. Our mission after running to the Methodist Church was to extract the sunflower seeds from the flower heads, retrieve the last tomatoes from the plants in the greenhouse, pulverise the sunflower stalks with a mallet (Jo particularly enjoyed this) and generally tidy and prepare the garden for the colder months. By the end of the evening everything was shipshape and there were heaps of green tomatoes ready to be transformed into chutney. Now that's something to relish.

There was plenty of washing and drying up to be done, along with table clearing and hoovering. Such a great place to stop by in a lunch break and the blondie treat definitely helped with the energy levels.

I've never harvested potatoes but that was one of our jobs at this session. We dug them out of the compost and put them into a crate, ready for use at the Open Table, where a meal is cooked for the community. Meanwhile, Williams was back on compost-turning duty, having done such an impressive job last time. It was lovely to meet new GooodGymer Melissa, and we hope to see her again soon. The rain started to fall right at the end of the session, so it was time to make a dash and avoid the splash. We'll be back next month.