Off to the greenhouse (pretty sure i haven't made that name up but you know when you start to doubt yourself) this evening to help clear the space out the front, or is it the back? This involved filling the big bin with wood, carpets, bin bags and plethora of other things, and extra points could be awarded for bouncing off the lid and in. These points are not redeemable unless you like pasta bakes. Saws were used and big pointy lever-y things were utilised in our quest to tidy up.

Was great to see some of the changes that had been made and hear of plans for the future. Anyway i'm home now so the report must end. Pretty sensible report this time. No snail orgies today.

Until next time...

Dodging the raindrops, Janka (celebrating her 100th good deed) and Melanie set about clearing as much of the laying green waste, plus a stack more, to leave the growing patch of ground with only the plants we want there. Excellent progress! Then coffee and cake, obviously.

Good weather and a great team of GoodGymmers and local volunteers meant oodles of progress in the outside green space, clearing ivy, looping and copping trees and shrubs and unearthing a LOT of litter and recycling, including a bowl to add to the growing "found crockery" collection.

Fabulous to have Sasha join us for her first session, hopefully the first of many!

Delicious soup for the volunteers finished off the session with the aches setting in after sitting down for lunch. Spring is definitely here.

A beautiful evening for a run/walk to a new task beneficiary - well, new for Tuesday evenings, it's one we've been visiting on the last few Sundays.

The Green House is owned by the Council but they'd had to pretty-much abandon the building due to costs. It's an eco-friendly, green-roof wooden building that's now leased to Xquisite Spaces who have big plans for community events as well as renting out the studio and other indoor space. They've spent the winter repairing the inside (including rotten wooden floor and many leaking pipes) and for Spring have turned to the outside space which had become incredibly overgrown.

Also part of the lease are six parking spaces and hedge line, two of which have been used as a dumping ground for building waste and the holly bushes have thrived on neglect. This bodes well for the future, just with a little more taming!

Lifting, shifting and brutal cutting back are GoodGym Bristol key skills and over 60 minutes the unloved-looking spaces were transformed into actual parking/utility spaces with plants that can thrive and years of leaf mulch skillfully chucked under the bottom of the hedging plants/trees. Lots of very old litter was also pulled out of the now-quite-a-lot-thinner holly and sorted for recycling or actual litter and the green waster was added to the pile for collection.

Then the rocks - from the builders' rubble dump, lots of bits of tarmac, concrete and a few bricks to lift and shift, some braving heaving lifts with spades (newly acquired by Lou from Xquisite Spaces from a second-hand tool search), others grabbing handfuls and the system leading to the Rock-Queue - thank to Frances for the pun, I'm sure Jason is jealous it wasn't him but pretty confident he'll find ways to get it into conversation over the next week or so.

Having wowed Lou with our ability to get weird things done whilst having a good time, we were off to Workout or, for those feeling a bit peckish, Rosa's Thai for our monthly Eats - a local eatery that doesn't mind a group of sweaty runners turning up for a quick bite and a lot more chat. Possibly the speediest service we've ever had, and NO RAIN AT ALL - more of this, please!

Sunday at The Green House for more nature-supporting tidying - dead hedging, leaf mulching, litter-picking goodness as the outside gets tidier for some community events. And Jana found a very useful mallet.

Then coffee.

From a gloomy start to a super-productive clearing session all the way back to the fence, plus protecting some of the small hopefully-shrubs that might make a bit of a hedge - lots of hamstring stretching!