After a COVID-related cancellation of our planned task we headed to a hastily arranged task at the OxGrow Community Garden at Hogacre Common instead.

The runners took the shady route along the river, daydreaming of icecream and wild swimming, while the rest of the gang joined us at the bottom of the infamous steps of doom. Heading up and over (thankfully not carrying a tonne of woodchip or a sofa this time!) we arrived in the garden to find Simon and the OxGrow team all set with a list of tasks for us. No surprise that with the recent hot, dry weather one of the most urgent jobs was to give the whole place a thorough watering. To-ing and fro-ing to the water system with watering cans (and sometimes using the extra troughs around the garden for which we dug channels for the water pipes on our last visit) the whole place got a good drenching, which will hopefully keep the plants happy until the weekend rain.

Meanwhile a smaller group dug over a bed in the TAP Social area of the garden. Tap Social haven't been able to do much with their corner until recently and so it has got a bit wild. Digging over one of their beds should help them get growing again sooner rather than later.

Last but definitely not least, our final group raked up the cut grass around the community garden while they waited for the scythes to be ready. You can't keep a GoodGymer from a scything task, so as soon as the scythes were prepped and sharpened they switched tools and headed out into the main common to scythe the long grass in the orchard. A veritable masterclass in scyronised scything ensued (try saying that 20 times fast), with long grass falling and pollen flying. I'm always grateful to get through a scything task with everyone's toes still intact, so well done Poldarks!

New GoodGym rule - the only acceptable outfits are GoodGym Tshirts or Britney Tshirts.