The Sunday morning volunteering session at South Ealing Cemetery - a place that Ealing Parks Foundation transforms into a serene, green space, safe and friendly for the wider public to use - was powered by six GoodGymers. Jemma and Jo both joined for their second GoodGym task, while Maria, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash were no strangers to the joys of Sunday morning Ealing sessions. Steph, Maria and Kash even got to do a solid warm-up earlier on in Lammas Park, with bodyweight exercises on the menu.

The workout-for-good at the cemetery was not a light one, despite the activity description promising planting geraniums. The space for plants had to be prepared first, which involved removing barrows and barrows of excess soil from the bed in front of the chapel. The amount of dirt the GoodGymers and other volunteers dug out and wheeled to the hidden parts of the cemetery could create a brand new flower bed!

Digging in the earth at the graveyard wouldn't be complete without someone excavating some suspicious bones in the process. Jo and Jemma were pondering where the remains came from.

"That bone is so small. Couldn't belong to a human!"
"Who knows - could be a bone from a pinky?"
"There are a lot of chicken shops and foxes nearby. They must have dragged this here."

Meanwhile, Sevan discovered different findings at the back of the cemetery: men's trousers and kids' orange football trainers, the latter in pretty good condition. The owners haven't been found, dead or alive.

While the rest of the team was pressing on to complete levelling the flowerbed, Maria started planting geraniums, and Jemma sprinkled the seed mix over the beds. Jane, the task owner, promised a display of colour as a reward in a couple of months when the plants would start to flower. She was also impressed with what an addition of GoodGymers brought to the community day.

"That's amazing. Without you, we would be digging that bed for three days!"

The geranium is only a temporary solution, and different flowers will be planted in the same bed in autumn. In the meantime, we are looking forward to seeing the area blossom when we run past it in the coming months.