We returned to Carrington Community Gardens on a sunny (but thankfully slightly cooler) evening for a second round of clearing the overgrowth. We met Councillor Nayab Patel again on arrival before setting to work. On our last visit we made a start on clearing the main pathway and this time we turned our attention to some of the other areas that have become untidy and filled with weeds and brambles.

We all agreed that some of the best tasks involve us just being able to pull things out of the ground as it gives us both a physical workout and a satisfying psychological boost. What isn't quite so fun is negotiating the thorny branches which seemed worse than ever on this occasion, or maybe our gardening gloves just weren't quite thick enough. Either way, we all got a few pricks along the way, but we still managed to fill 8 bags of cuttings and unearth some litter and a mirror. Thankfully, our work was rewarded and our minds distracted from our thorn-filled fingers by Nayab's treat bag which was once again generously filled with muffins and crisps!

As we prepared to take our group photo at the end, we were joined by two police officers who were on the beat in the local area. They were very interested in what GoodGym do and thankful that we were in the community garden to clear it up rather than set up a camp! They even helped out by taking our group photo with Nayab.

A few milestones to mention - Vytautas hs just hit 10 tasks, Matthew has now done 15 tasks and Rosemarie recently reached 20. Well done to them all! We also have Peter and Tom edging very close to some big milestones which we look forward to celebrating very soon!

Rachel and Stephanie (and Stephanie’s husband, Verety) headed to the United Reformed Church, Sherwood to help set up for the Sherwood Art Week craft fair.

Our task was to put up the bunting in the entrance and outside of the church to make it look more colourful and inviting to guests. This was exactly what we did the previous year, so luckily we could refer back to the photos of last year’s task to remind ourselves what we hung where. This meant we were far quicker with far less faffing around this year, and had all our bunting up and swaying in the wind within 50 minutes.

A big thank you to Verety who came along with Stephanie and became chief hanger-upper due to his superior height!