9 GoodGymers got stuck into a shed load of jobs for sweep thrills at the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden

On a cloudy but dry Tuesday evening, nine GoodGymers entered into the Josiah Briathwaite Community Garden, part of the Nubian Life Centre. We were all greeted by the lovely, Susannah who was very glad to see the red GoodGym army back to lend a hand.

The Nubian Life Centre provides adult day care services for the Afro-Caribbean community with health issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer's.

Pre-Covid-19, the community garden was used by the elders at weekends to grow organic and medicinal food, and as a safe space for children to explore and find all the bugs! Currently, they are running online workshops for both adults and children which are going down really well, especially with the children - oh the wonders of Zoom!

Susannah ran through tonight's list of tasks with the group:

• Weed the patio and paths 🌱
• Sweep the patio and paths 🧹
• Cut the overhanging plants ✂️
• Tidy and sort the shed and greenhouse 💪
• Construct some new shelving for the greenhouse 🔨

Moving shed loads

Arba and Ed were tasked with a big challenge...their first job was to remove EVERYTHING out of the cluttered and unorganised shed and sort through it (chuck, keep or almagamate!). They worked in perfect tandom and it wasn't long before a whole plethora of items were lying outside of the shed.

Amongst the boxes, bags, tools, lawnmower and BBQ, Ed discovered three beers that were all (sadly) well beyond their best before date. There were also broken broom handles which Ed gave to Will to break up into smaller pieces - thankfully only one break was done before Susannah interjected to stop the destruction, and exclaimed that the broom handles could be used at their art workshops.

Once everything had been removed and sorted through, Arba and Ed began the process of putting it all back in - this time in a far more organised fashion! Check out the transformation, it's impressive! Susannah expressed her delight at there being storage space within the shed, and the fact that she could now both see and locate items inside!

Sweeping up appearances

Michelle, Analiese, Beth and Lucy began tackling the weeds on the patio and paths. Analiese discovered the magical "s••t hot pointy weeding tool" (Tom Clough, 2019) and took great satisfaction in removing the weeds from the cracks in the patio and paths with it.

Lucy went with her favourite past time, sitting on the floor and pulling out weeds, Michelle joined her and also applied her manual brut strength method on the weeds to good effect.

As Lucy tackled more of the weeds by hand (still sat down!), Analiese and Michelle ensured a clean sweep up of the weeds into neat piles; while Beth was on hand with the large dustpan and brush to sweep up their many piles!

Cut's the worst that could happen?

Outside of the garden, Will was helping Susannah to cut, sweep and bag all the large overgrown plants. With heaps of clippings surrounding him, Michelle and Beth came out to lend a hand armed with bin bags, brushes and large dustpans and brushes - we get treated to all the best equipment by Susannah, and I could sense a twinge of jealousy from our GoodGym Hounslow neighbours! 🤪

GoodGym in glass houses with lots of shelf-efficacy!

Holly and Miranda teamed up to tackle the greenhouse. Due to the shed being too full and unorganised, the garden tools and other items better suited to the shed had been placed in the greenhouse with all the plants.

Once Holly and Miranda had removed all the items out of the greenhouse onto the lawn, they then began to assemble the shelving unit - to help utilise the space within the greenhouse.

With a bit of 'to me to you' action and good teamwork it wasn't long before the shelving unit was built and carried into the greenhouse. The final step was to put everything that did belong in the greenhouse - plants, pots and compost - back into the greenhouse and onto the newly built shelving unit.

With all the jobs done ✅, everyone posed for a team photo, lit up in the darkness by Susannah's small but powerful lamps.

Before we headed our separate ways home, Susannah reiterated to the group how pleased she was to see us back, and thanked us all for our hard work - the nine of us had worked for over an hour = nine hours of work, saving Susannah a whole day's work! Well done team! 🙌🏼

Big welcome along to our THREE new GoodGymers tonight, Holly, Miranda and Ed - thank you for coming along, hope you all enjoyed your first task!