This October, our usual third Saturday of the month, dedicated to Western Road Urban Garden, turned into a celebration of the end of the growing season. With the harvest already collected, all that was left was a tidy-up and throwing a party afterwards!

The atmosphere in Southall was buzzing with the upcoming Diwali festivities. It was a fantastic time to join GoodGym and Southall Community Alliance at a very special community day. Deepak decided to do exactly that. Welcome to the team, Deepak!

With eight GoodGymers to help the urban garden this Saturday, Janpal and Paul scrambled to provide them with a variety of light and heavier tasks. Steph Ducat, Ash, Afshin, Kash and Sevan, together with a good friend from previous WRUG sessions, Andre, and a new volunteer, Sangheeta, chose a tricky task of moving timber stacked alongside the polytunnel. The planks were not only heavy and long, but also packed with nails. Everyone was extra careful, resisting any temptation to show off, which resulted in a new stack of timber in a more appropriate spot and zero mishaps on the way! Sevan then joined Iram, A.B. and Deepak in meticulous weeding around the fruit trees in the orchard and wheelbarrowing the surprisingly large amounts of green waste to the compost heap.

It was not yet noon when our team and the new arrivals at WRUG slowly started gravitating towards the polytunnel to uncover its hidden treasures. This time, we don't mean okra, chillies or gourd, but a feast prepared by Janpal: samosas, chicken biryani, Indian sweets, hot and cold drinks and an abundance of fruit! The mid-session break was a great opportunity to chat with the familiar and the new faces and sample the flavours that are best found in Southall.

It might have been tempting to call it a day after such a pleasant interval - but not for the GoodGymers! The timber carriers team logged a new log-moving achievement in their portfolio. They migrated another pile of wood into the space created after removing the planks to build a timber wall with a double function: a border with neighbouring property and an enormous bug hotel.

That's not a hotel. It's a resort!"

When the main objectives, weeding the orchard and moving the wood, were done, the GoodGymers proactively asked about a bonus task - and Janpal responded! The recently cleared hedging and the bases of the orchard trees needed a thick layer of woodchip. With forks, wheelbarrows, buckets, and, of course, great teamwork, we completed that activity in no time. That was finally the time to call it a day (and the end of the season) - unless you were one of the GoodGymers with yet another session in store on Saturday!

On a cloudy, yet no longer rainy Tuesday evening, Sevan took Ealing GoodGymers for a run through Walpole Park to Lammas Enclosure. Surprisingly, we went past the Transition Orchard, not stopping there this time, then past the tennis courts. Did our run leader miss the task location? Today we met Trevor from Ealing Transition at a new woodchip pile. He challenged us to fill our wheelbarrows first before he would take us to the area in need of GoodGym hands.

"You are filling these wheelbarrows six times faster than I would!" - Trevor.

Trevor showed us a patch of tiny trees planted last year. During the late spring, the snips were having a tough time, bullied by the brambles that grew much quicker. Trevor had already started rescuing the saplings to prevent the bullies from completely taking over, and we could see piles of thorny cuttings around. Our job was to free all the remaining tiny trees and cover the ground with woodchip to suppress further growth of weeds.

At first, the whole team focused on taking down the brambles, with A.B. and Freya at the forefront. Gradually, the chopping team started losing its members to the woodchipping job: first Steph Ducat, then Harvey, and finally Kash. Sevan stayed in the small forest area to rake and coordinate the woodchip operations.

As the cuttings heap grew, the woodchip pile shrunk, eventually running out completely. Just 45 minutes of GoodGymming transformed a sad, overgrown thicket into a little forest of happy saplings, thriving surrounded by a thick layer of mulch.

"On behalf of the trees - thank you!" - Trevor.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for the trees that had been now set for a fresh start in their long life - but we will be back to check in on them later in the summer and fight back the thorny bullies if needed!

Next week we have a totally different type of task: we'll be teaming up with Ealing Repair Café again to reduce fabric waste and create goods for the community! Sign up now. It's an indoor task, so the weather is not an excuse 😉