Our community garden tasks have been a little thin on the ground this summer, so we were very excited to be invited back to Arkwright Meadows this week.

Katie had a few different tasks for us, the first of which was rejigging their shop area. With the hot, dry weather we've had lately, a lot of the plants in it had seen better days and it was time to consolidate them to fewer shelves and move the empty units out of the way.

Next, we split into two teams. Those who weren't around for last week's bramble attack (Leah, Rachel and Charlie who was celebrating his tenth GoodGym task!) headed over to the area normally used by the children's group to clear some more of the spiky fellows and make the amphitheatre space safer for them. It was tough but satisfying digging them out and I think we made a lot of good progress. They definitely hadn't grown back to the levels we saw when we first came to the site a year or two ago.

Over on the other side of the gardens, Peter, Natalie and Nigel were on compost duty, moving the oldest compost into containers ready to be used and jumping up and down on the newer stuff to tamp it down. Good use of the GoodGym muscle, I'm sure you'll agree!

We were back at the ICCA tonight for some more railing painting.

It started a little differently, though, with Leah and Sarah meeting up for dinner at the ICCA's Dosti Club. Fully carb-loaded on noodles, chips and rice, plus a bit of mango kulfi where Natalie got in on the action, we headed down to get painting.

Charlie welcomed first-timer Jen, and we unpacked the kit. Leah finished off a tiny bit of the fiddly double gate we didn't get to last time while everyone else got cracking on the next section. We managed to get a decent chunk done in an hour, but we're seriously considering a hack Sarah had seen where you apply the paint with socks to get more done with a swipe.

So if you're joining us for one of these sometime soon, maybe raid your sock drawer on the way!

Wooooah, we're (roughly) halfway there! Woooooooooooooah! And paint is in our haaaair!

This week we were tackling the most intricate part of the ICCA's railings so far – the double gate!

We were wondering what the letters in the middle of each gate were and I'm pleased to tell you that I found out. The building was originally a factory for Thomas Forman and Sons – apparently inspired in design by Buckingham Palace. Every day's a school day.

I'm not sure if it was the heat making it super gloopy or what, but the paint was still as unwieldy as it was back in the dark and windy nights we were here in the winter and spring, so we all came home sporting various levels of paint coverage ourselves. Rachel had to bathe her legs in white spirit to get hers off!

We also welcomed back Florence and Elspeth after some time away. Hopefully see you all again soon!

This week saw us return to the Meadows Food Bank. Did you know it was the venue for GoodGym Nottingham's first "proper" task nearly three years ago? Leah, Peter and Rachel were all there for it, and by the way the tasks fell, it turned out to be the venue for Leah's 100th this week. Most serendipitous!

We met up with Mark as usual on arrival who had plenty for us to get stuck into.

Leah and Peter summoned up their inner Dale Wintons for a round of Supermarket Sweep, boxing up two-person packages ready to be bagged and sent home with service users in the coming days. Meanwhile, Khiltee, Nigel and Florence were on clothes duty, hanging things up on rails and making it look a lot nicer. Matt, Sarah and Charlie were bagging up toiletry packs (somehow that stock of mini soaps is still going).

Finally, it was all hands on deck sorting out the dried pasta stocks, making sure everything went in the right date order so the older stuff gets distributed first.

We just had time to gobble a few celebratory muffins and flapjacks before heading our separate ways.

No task next week, but we're back at Sherwood Community Centre on 3 June!