Days have been noticeably cooler and damper of late and Stoke Newington Common is looking less parched than it did over the summer. However, the watering team were out again to give the young trees an extra hydro-boost.

Nick made his debut appearance on the Common, combining the task with a training run ahead of the inaugural Shoreditch Half this weekend. Good luck to Nick and everyone else running on Sunday! Stay hydrated!

A welcome return to see our host Taiwo at the Greenway Orchard, who had forewarned us that we'd be doing a lot of digging out of roots this evening to try and stop the brambles and everything else that we've spent the summer successfully removing from the flower meadow, growing back anytime soon, and had borrowed some more forks specifically for the job in hand.

It was also a warm welcome to Rebecca, who joined Hilary, Adam and Nick on the 3km run from Freaks and Geeks and admitted her last GoodGym session had been quite a few years ago, and to Kyra, who met us at the Orchard and for whom this was her first GoodGym mission...and conveniently local. Welcome both, and hopefully you'll be able to join us on more tasks around the neighbourhood over the coming weeks and months.

Armed with gloves and forks and a few other instruments of plant torture, we quickly got to work on root removal, realising that with sunset at 7.15, it would also start to get dark pretty soon - we're clearly back into headtorch season once again.

A huge amount of effort was applied by the team to remove as many of the roots and plants as we could, some proving more resistant to removal than others, and requiring a combination of forks, hands and sheer grunt to get them out of the ground. Adam proving that even the hardiest of forks was no match for some of the embedded root networks...

With darkness now upon us, and with aching backs and tired hands, we called a collective stop at 8pm, leaving behind a patchwork of disturbed earth and a healthy pile of uprooted brambles and plants to be added to the compost heap.

We plan to be back again at the Orchard at the start of November, with lanterns and spotlights, and hopefully not too much regrowth in the intervening weeks...

A rare Tuesday lunchtime visit to see Mr T, as he hadn't secured a visitor over the weekend - he was clearly glad to see me (as much for the spinach, cheese and milk) but also to tell me how much he'd enjoyed the last night of the proms, which had featured a Dumfries native in tartan troosers and a lot of Union Jack flag waving...just how Mr T likes it.