This Friday, GoodGym volunteers swapped gardening gloves for burgers and hot dogs as we joined the Friends of Everton Park for their Community Garden Open Evening.

The event was a great opportunity to celebrate the hard work that goes into maintaining this fantastic community space throughout the year. We spent the evening enjoying delicious food, chatting with local residents and catching up with fellow volunteers in a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

One of the highlights was meeting people from the neighbourhood and hearing their stories about the park and garden. The friendly conversations reminded us how important community spaces are for bringing people together and creating lasting connections.

Goodgym got a special shout out from John, the Gardens Lead, who recognised us for all our hard work throughout the year in helping their team to maintain this valued community space. John's speech included some lovely words about welcoming those seeking safety, and the importance of inclusivity and community.

A huge thank you to the Friends of Everton Park for inviting us along and for all the work they do to keep the park and garden thriving. It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying the space and sharing a genuine sense of community spirit.

We're already looking forward to our next visit!

It's Your World Liverpool are a group of very dedicated neighbours, who clean up the streets and public spaces of L8. We received a request from good friend of Goodgym, Kirsty, to help It's Your World Liverpool to clear all the weeds from a pathway used by a local school. 3 Goodgymers answered the call and each made their own way to the task. We were well-equipped with a range of gardening tools, green bins, litter pickers and a very large bin bag for any rubbish. We had been told to expect rain but it was actually a dry, slightly humid evening so the coats we'd all brought were not actually needed (thankfully!). Weeds lined the whole wall of the pathway. Some were easier to pull up, but others required some significant effort and a mix of chopping and pruning. However, as Kirsty noted, there was a brilliant system in place to remove these swiftly. There were also several overhanging branches starting to affect the walk down the pathway - Naser made light work of these. All in all, lots of trips to the green bins were made. As the weeds started to clear, it became evident that the leaves were literally littered with litter so a thorough litter pick was also needed. With a litter pick and the biggest bin bag I think I've ever seen in hand, a thorough litter pick began down the pathway and along the wall. At first, I caught glimpses of blue but I just thought they were probably part of a plastic bag that had ripped so carried on and got distracted by the other items along the way including an umbrella. However, small blue pieces kept appearing and seemed to multiply and then we suddenly realised they were actually confetti. Now there were lots of hypotheses for why this was there but the most likely seemed to be a baby shower from one of the neighbouring houses. Needless to say, clearing up confetti with a litter pick proved an interesting challenge. Well done to everyone involved. The pathway was de-weeded throughly and the confetti cleared - Kirsty was made up with the results!

We were so excited for our first task with Park Palace Ponies as our Group Run this week. Although the plan was to clear out the office, and not actually play with the ponies, we were hoping to sneak a peek as we galloped in for our task. Alas, the best laid plans... An hour before we were due to meet for our run, disaster struck, and Park Palace Ponies contacted us to regretfully cancel due to a safety issue - the roof had leaked and impacted the electrics. Everyone (and the ponies!) were fine, but they had to close the centre and the task wouldn't be able to go ahead at all.

Now as gutted as I was, even I recognised water + electricity = not safe, so regretfully we had to concede defeat and agree to reschedule when the office is back up and running.

That left the big question - what DO we do? Options varied from cancelling (not really the Goodgym way), an impromptu social, or a litter pick. The litter pick won out.

And so after swift organisation and collection of the litter picking kits, we headed to Smithdown Road where we'd heard there was some litter which needed clearing up. Thank you to Sally Ann for whipping up the litter pickers, and to Laura for savvily intercepting Sally Ann en route to carry the litter pickers whilst Sally Ann headed to the group run meeting point to capture anyone who hadn't got our messages.

Clara was fresh from organising her first GG Parkrun tourist trip to Worsley Woods over the weekend, and met Naser, who was proud to wear his red Goodgym shirt for the first time.

I was sulking about missing out on the promised ponies and reluctantly dragged myself along, finding litter little solace in this no-horse race. But the spirit of the team soon cheered me up. The group was such good company as we walked along, clearing as we went. We found no less than 3 x complete pairs of shoes, a little flashing blue light, and a Santa which was well overdue a clear up. Our wandering took us past a little green area on Smithdown Road, which happened to be the site of Naser's first ever task with us. We reminisced about that lovely task - Laura has been so good with the children who were 'helping' with painting the benches, and the fire brigade had arrived to check there was no anti-social activity going on - in fact it was quite the opposite!

Before we knew it, an hour had passed and we had 4 bags of litter to dispose of in the council bins. Despite the grey skies, the rain, and the distinct lack of ponies, we were all glad we'd turned out to do our little bit to contribute to the community.

Well done guys for the speedy change of plans and dedication to doing a little something to help out, even if it wasn't our 'mane' task. You can sleep easy when you 'hit the hay' tonight, knowing you've kept our contributions 'stable' and 'trotted' around the local area 'champing at the bit' to help (I really should save some of these for when we reschedule...)