This morning I met up with Jaya and Sarah for a mission in Southwark for Mr and Mrs J.

Mr and Mrs J are very frail, and find that they can't do as much in their garden as they used to. Their immediate family live a bit too far away to come over frequently enough to help with the garden. GoodGym were asked if we could help with this by removing some weeds.

Mrs J, being slightly more mobile than Mr J, showed us to the back garden when we arrived. She had a fully stocked shed that was very representative of their previous gardening routine. I was personally very glad to see that we wouldn't be fighting over tools to use! 😉

Initially, Jaya started on weeding the patio while Sarah and I set about tackling some weeds that had sprung up near the shed, as they were blocking access to the rest of the (large!) garden.

While we worked, we talked about some of the usual GoodGym topics. Having never met Sarah and Jaya before, I was surprised that they also hadn't met each other previously: For some reason, having seen their names on lots of run reports, I'd just assumed that the likelihood of none of us knowing each other was minimal. However, this just meant that we had lots of fresh topics to discuss 😍

Of these, my favourite topic involved the colloquial name of one of the weeds we were pulling up (sticky willy) and whether or not the spores from them that were attaching themselves strenuously to our leggings could be called "sticky willy balls". Regardless, they got everywhere! I insisted on taking lots of photos of them, so that everyone could see exactly how spored to death we were. I only realised afterwards that taking closeup photos of people's leggings is perhaps not the most normal thing to do on first acquaintance 😅 Oh well 🤷

After an hour or so, Jaya headed off while Sarah and I carried on for a second hour. In total, we filled 12 brown sacks of garden waste (or 1 bin and 9 sacks (aka 4 hypothetical bins), depending on the volumetric measure you prefer). In doing so, we removed some patio weeds (Jaya's pet project), uncovered a path (my pet project), and freed a couple of rose bushes (Sarah's pet project).

Mr and Mrs J were grateful for what we'd done for them in the couple of hours we were there. There's obviously a lot more to do now that more of the garden has been opened up by our work today, so hopefully that can be part of a follow-up mission! 😄

It was great working with you guys - hopefully see you on a Camden group run soon! (Now that I've sold it to you with the weekly pub trip 😄)

Mrs C's garden was very overgrown with grass and weeds. Our task was to clear it as much as possible so that Mrs C, her daughter and her two cats could start going out in the garden again this summer. Unfortunately, the weather had not been kind to us for our mission - although it had stopped raining by the time we got there, the garden was soaking, which made it a lot trickier for us. Still, we gave it our best effort! Another challenge was for us to get the strimmer working. Neither of us had used one before, but with a bit if help from Mrs C we were able to replace the line. Jaya set to work on the lawn whilst I attempted some weeding. Not easy when everything was soaking wet! We managed to fill two black bags with grass and weeds, which was a good start on making the garden more inviting for Mrs C. Hopefully, some GoodGymmers will be back soon to finish the rest of the garden - fingers crossed the weather will be better next time!

What a lovely sunny day for a mission! Jaya and I were welcomed by Mrs B whose garden is their family’s pride and joy. Both Mrs B and her husband have issues with their mobility which stop them from tending to the garden as much as they would like - although it was still looking beautiful (see the pictures that Mrs B was happy to share). Some of the plants had been there when they moved in over 22 years ago but lots had been planted and carefully tended to by Mrs and Mr B so it was very important to them that we knew which ones needed to be pulled up and which were to keep. There wasn’t much time so Jaya worked in the front weeding and planting, while I worked in the back, weeding and tending to the plants that Mrs B could no longer reach. We chatted about gardening in India and a shared family interest in Cricket. When it was time to go Mrs and Mr B seemed very pleased with our work and expressed that they would love to have more “runners” in the future. Mission accomplished :-)

Jaya and Dave arrived at Mr C's house to dismantle a divan bed. It was a simple task that was finished within 10-15 minutes with just a few screws to take out and pieces to pull apart. We re-arranged the pieces into various parts of the room, slotting them out of the way behind doors and wardrobes. After this,Mr C's friend asked us to move a chair in the living room, so we rearranged things so that Mr C could still have access to everything he needed and then moved the chair to make room for his hospital bed... et voila!