There's been lots of construction at Dame Emily Park where the Community Garden now has concreted raised beds instead of rotting planters and they've taken the opportunity to sift soil to remove the big- and medium-size stones. With mushroom boxes over buckets to keep it real.

With a team on the main stone-removing, a second team on the in-planter stone removing and a third team weeding, boarding and mulching the berry plants, it was all systems go in the fading sunshine with everyone trying to keep warm.

Discussions included whether slo-mo would make the soul-sifting more action-packed and what music was appropriate for a speeded-up version and whether the Benny Hill theme tune was a saxophone. Full marks to Frances for knowing Yackety Sax.

Azzurra and Janka had made short work of the berry-mulching and, with full protection gloves, set about feeding the nettle soup with more lovely chopped nettles.

The soil-sifters had soon worked through enough soil to have topped up the first planter, with Vaguely Northern Darren and Caroline from the running group working in situ whilst Robin raked and taught them both some German, or Italian, or both.

The soil was then covered in cardboard weighted down with bricks and, because we're super-resourceful, the big stones from the soil sifting. Meanwhile, the medium-sized stones were making a path to the resources shed under the careful eyes of Bruce and Jason with Roddy and Marianne maximising the sifting-per-second speed.

With the work (almost) done, we enjoyed Ursula's refreshments - Blackberry juice and biscuits - and the empty wheelbarrow that had worked hard.

As Vaguely Northern Darren had hurt his back during the task, everyone decided to walk and talk back to Queen Square and onwards to sitting outside at Workout as there was speed dating going on, which we tried not to disrupt - honest!

See you all at the next one - Wednesday lunchtime, Wednesday evening, Friday morning,Bank Holiday Monday or next Tuesday.

The sun was shining brightly for the massed GoodGymmers of Bristol, welcoming Nick to his first good deed and Rohan for his second - a perfect choice!

Our international visitor from GoodGym past was David, back to say hello from Lisbon, where he's our spy-on-the-ground for all things parkrun Portugal.

We were also joined by newly-qualified Run Leader Lexi who shadowed the Ace Run Leader Vaguely Northern Darren who was leader and Other Ace Run Leader Richard B who was backmarking, to see just how effortless we make it look...

The runners set off on a longer route and the walkers followed them out the square and picked up Jason who thought he wouldn't make it to us in time - well done! We beat (sorry, arrived before) the runners and Julie had just arrived to see the beautiful grasses blowing in the wind, now they're not quite so trapped by the brambles and other weeds.

We split up into tombside-bramble-clearance, huge thistle-gone-to-seed-capture, paving-slab-cracks-weeding and revealing-the-gravel-searchers - Friend of Brunswick Jo even went for an extra dumpy sack as the gardeners had cleared away the half-empty sack from the day before and Frances collected up some drug paraphenalia before any of the local dogs could hurt their paws, otherwise they'd be poor paws.

The huge thistle was soon cut back by Darren and Richard G, Nick and Rohan had their first gardening experience in the gravel, joined by Lexi and Janka Valè and Chris took the high road with top step paving whilst Julie, Bruce and Jason took on the very, very long brambles and other weeds between the tombs.

With oodles of weeds now in dumpy sacks we made a quick getaway to see the 1500m men's final at the Olympics and, even more importantly, a great GoodGym Eats at Three brothers, joined by Paul and Danica - loads of goodness and fun, despite Josh Kerr missing out on a gold medal.

Weren't we the lucky ones with a weather forecast updating from thunder and lightening to no rain at all! I'm pretty sure this is also why our numbers swelled from 5 sign ups at midday to 13 when we were arriving in Queen Square, sadly minus Vaguely Northern Darren as he was poorly. But everyone there had signed up, so Melanie didn't need to hunt for any email addresses, revealing embarrassing nick names when personal email addresses were created!

It was great having very experienced GoodGymmers (from back when it all began in Bristol) alongside our newer members and this was a firs time to Brunswick Cemetery for Freya, James and Bruce, with all the health and safety warnings that are needed.

Paul led his band of runners who arrived just as the walkers were staring to take up tools with our target being the disappearing (from being found by GoodGym) spiral path, with errant weeds to remove edges to be sought, teams taking on the challenge at the top, middle and bottom of the spiral whilst Di from the Friends group continued the dogwood-bindweed clearance and Bruce tried his hand (and bare arms and legs) at nettle-bindweed clearing until it all got a bit too tingly.

Someone had nicked the empty dumpy sack we'd hidden in the park just a couple of hours earlier, so we were back to black sacks and the rubble bags pre-purchased in a Brilliant Exhibition of Forward Planning (BEFP). And the rubble bags are a nice blue colour, so that's all good.

Everyone was very industrious as we even saw a bit of blue sky celebrating our achievements at, yes, finding edges and making the gravel look much more shiny, with top stomping by Freya who'd been practising the previous week in Totterdown.

When we'd had enough (running late as we're SO committed), we headed back to Workout and ClubHaus for our July GoodGym Eats whilst supporting Valè through the difficulties of France's early goal against Spain in the men's Euro 2024 semi-final, ordered some lovely burgers despite ClubHaus being a bit busy with football fans and continued the general chat about Very Important Things, sat outside by the water.

We really are very lucky people (vlp).

Let the chips fall where they may I hear them say. At the end of the day we made our way

To Totterdown to dig a hole That was the goal

No hole to dig It was already quite big

Chipping was laid Water was sprayed

Trees in the ground That’s where they’re found

Soil was shifted Our spirits lifted

Brambles trimmed on the bank, what rhymes with bank? I've drawn a blank...

The task was done That was fun 🙂