Our litter pick around Gipsy Lane/Cheney Lane area was just the 1st of February pick-me-up we all needed. Armed with gloves, bags and litter pickers we were on a mission to clean up the mean streets of Headington.

We divided into 2 groups to clean up both sides of Gipsy Lane and then parted ways as one group went down Cheney Lane and the other swung around through some of the residential streets. With both Oxford Brookes University Campus and Cheney School nearby this is a high footfall area, and sadly attracts large amounts of litter.

This week's magical mystery litter pick turned up car parts, food containers, crisp packets, sweetie wrappers, bottles galore, many coffee cups, a teddy bear, items of clothing, a set of keys, a condom wrapper, and a stash of out of date food cans.

GoodGym: Always bring the Can-Do attitude.

Congratulations on your 10th Good Deed Ellie!

We seem to have the knack of scheduling digging tasks during cold snaps lately, so this week we were exchanging regular messages with Helen from the Oxford Urban Wildlife Group to see if we could go ahead with our Saturday morning task. Luckily the ground hadn't frozen too hard by Saturday morning, so off to the nature park we went. It looked magical in the nature park in the frosty, freezing fog. Almost pretty enough for us to forget the cold!

Our task was to dig out bramble roots in a couple of patches of land that are destined to be grassland. The brambles take over fast in the spring, smothering other plants and massively reducing biodiversity, so digging out their roots in the winter helps stop that happening. Bramble roots are often huge - you'd easily mistake some for tree roots - so it's not always an easy task, but it is satisfying. The wildlife group had got 2 new Lazy Dogs for our session (sadly not snoozy canine companions, but a tool designed to dig out roots) so we were well equipped this month. A couple of muddy hours later we'd cleared several wheelbarrow loads of roots and had kept active enough that most of us could still feel our fingers and toes!

Welcome to GoodGym Louise.