Last night, 9 of us headed out for what turned out to be quite the ponding experience.

Our mission was to give the pond some much-needed TLC. There was plenty of hard work involved, including clearing out the weeds and digging out the stubborn ones, trimming back the ivy, and giving the area around the tomato plants a good weed.

Mark had been endeavored to take it easy on those shoulders, but of course, he couldn't help getting stuck in and digging deep to get to the root of the issue. As he reported today: "digging up those plants definitely took its Pond of Flesh from me.”

There was plenty of newt-ural territory covered in the comments, with everyone getting involved and coming up with increasingly terrible (and therefore brilliant) pond puns. 🐸🤓

The only downside was that it got dark within a few minutes, making it rather difficult to see what we were doing, but we managed to keep the pondemonium under control and no one fell in so that's a success in my book!

A really great difference made last night - thank you everyone - let's not let all these puns water down the achievement… 😉

On Saturday as well as the Parkruns, we've got Clearing up at the Pet Cemetery and weeding at Hervey Road

On sunday we've got Clean up Charlton.

Until next time!

Rachel

On a lovely late summer evening what could be better that an evening wandering around Blythe Hill and Perry Vale helping assess the local flora. Tonight's task was to help Street Trees for Living, a group that has been planting, checking and maintaining trees in Lewisham and generally making the borough look lovelier for a good while.

We were met by the amazing Eva, Leonie and David from the Street trees team and after a brief intro it was down to work. The task was simple: we had to assess trees planted in the last three years to check things such as leaf and trunk health, the state of the ground and that the trees' supports were still adequate, The hardest thing was dealing with how slow the local phone signal was for loading up our assessments. The task came with the bonus of the three Good Gymers getting to explore some pretty local streets that we otherwise wouldn't ever have come across.

And the second bonus reflected the generosity of our hosts: once we were done we were all treated to a drink and snacks in the nearby Blythe Hill Tavern, a well deserved result after a delightful evening.

Tonight's task was a welcome return to Florence Green to help at this lovely restored open space, We were met by Subo and a random passing volunteer and got down to work raking up leaves and grass and picking up sticks. What we lacked in tools we more than made up for in enthusiasm and soon the respective stick and leaf piles had grown to impressive heights. After a hour the place was looking significantly tidier and it was time to run off into the sunset.

Last night, 9 GoodGym Greenwichites got stuck into another productive evening of running and doing good.

A special welcome to Aidyn, who joined us for his very first good deed! Welcome Aidyn and we hope it’s the first of many! 🎉 And a huge congratulations to Aman on reaching an amazing 50 good deeds, as well as becoming our newest Taskforce member👏

Our tasks were a mix of indoor and outdoor jobs. In the community garden, we got busy weeding and watering, helping keep the space looking its best. Meanwhile, inside, we continued the slightly more dramatic task of taking down ceiling panels ready for gilding. And bring down the ceiling we did 😁

With everyone working efficiently, we got through it all in just 40 minutes, leaving enough time for a quick group photo before heading out for the run back to Charlton House.

Coming up: This weekend on Saturday we have gardening at Hervey Road and on Sunday we have clearance at windrush primary in Thamesmead.

Next Wednesday we're at the woodland walk by the memorial hospital.

Until next time, you wonderful human beings 👋

Rachel

An intrepid group of runners left Glass Mill a bit earlier than normal for our longest run of the year to Baring Road Allotments which are being converted from rubbish strewn abandoned ground into community allotments. We met Clare and Louise at the task.

We were issued with gloves and wheelbarrows which were skipped down to far end of the site, past sunflowers to collect rubbish, wood and bricks then trundled slowly back with the barrows to split into metals, wood and stone with the rest heading into the skip. We filled around a dozen barrows. It was a lovely task, in a beautiful location with plenty of wildlife (fox cub and loads of parakeets; Lindsay even had time to brush up her archery