We're a resourceful bunch of natural born problem solvers here at GoodGym Bath.

Today we met at Alice Park to do a couple of random, unconnected tasks:

• To line a planting bed - imagine an area of approximately 2 metres by 1 metre - to stop the "contents" leaking out.
• Construct a wicker fence to border off an area of path so as to stop unwanted passers-by entering onto parts of the site we wouldn't want them to visit.

That's all, nothing sinister.

Emily, Stephen, Meyrick and Jer (not real names..) started work on improving the planting bed. A second bed had previously been lined in a similar manner, for some other unspecified reason, so we had that as an example to guide our work..

We're clearly a bunch of True Crime aficionados since, after one of us (no names, to protect the innocent) noted that the aforementioned 2x1 sized bed would be the perfect size to fit, say, your enemy, discussions turned to related gardening topics, such as: how to most efficiently compost down organic matter if you were in a particular hurry to do so; how best to line the sides of a container so as to stop the contents getting out; and when they say pigs will eat anything, do they really mean everything?

Over on the fence-laying crew, that team started by hammering in posts into the ground. The posts needed to go in as deep as possible, for obvious reasons. The bulk of the task then involved carefully weaving branches between the posts.

Back at the planting bed, Meyrick was adroitly cutting up compost bags like a surgeon to act as the lining material; Emily was demonstrating surprising proficiency with a staple gun; and Stephen and Jer have clearly done a considerable amount of digging in their time. Wearing gloves at these kind of gardening tasks is always advised to, you know, keep your hands clean, avoid leaving fingerprints, stuff like that.

As fence team stopped at the halfway point for a coffee, team planting bed were so close to finishing up their job and making it look like noone had even been there that, that they stayed on to finish.

At their own coffee break, our host noted what a lovely clean job the team had made of their planting bed, and would they be so kind as to take a look at the other planter to tidy up that work a little, so as to make the lining work a little less obvious to prying eyes. Meanwhile, team fence finished up by chamfering around the edges of their woodwork, to better hide the evidence of their own craftwork.

Aaron noted that some of the posts had been difficult to get very deep in to the ground, and our host was telling us how the site has a membrane layer since there was formerly some kind of ground contamination below a certain layer. So I'd advise anyone to, say, never dig too deep on this site in case of what you find.

All in all two excellent jobs well done. It's like we were never there. In fact we were never there, ignore anything you might have just read...

Welcome

A special welcome to new GoodGymer, Upneet. It was great to have you along! The run reports aren't necessarily always quite this "creative" ... but if you can imagine, it's hard sometimes finding new and interesting ways to write "and then we did some gardening"... :)