This week our task was to help repaint the walls in the St Michael’s Fellowship office in Streatham.

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Once again GoodGym Lambeth are organising the annual Bake Off Sweetstake 🧑‍🍳 ✨ which has just kicked off for this year! The way it works is that we pick a contestant and when your contestant goes out, you bake and then bring some delicious home made goods to the next group run. The very first contestant to go out of bake off this year was Will so that meant Tilly was the one baking this week. She arrived at Papa’s with everyone’s eyes securely on the bag she had with her. ‘Did you bring cake?’ We all eagerly asked. Of course she did!

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We had a quick warm up, including a mini game of ‘Yianny says’ and listing our favourite types of cake, before heading up Brixton Hill. The ones arriving straight at the task arrived a bit before the main group coming from Papa’s so they were all kitted out with gloves, aprons and painting utensils by the time we got there. St Michael’s Fellowship had very kindly provided us with some drinks and snacks when we arrived so after a quick refreshment we got to work.

After half an hour of painting it was time to head off so we cleared up the paint trays, rollers and brushes and took some bin bags out with us on our way onto the street.

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With cake in mind, and the knowledge that this was a downhill run, we said goodbye to the ones heading straight home and ran back to Papa’s. We gathered round Tilly's delicious home made orange drizzle cupcakes (half of which were vegan!), devoured them and headed off home for the rest of our dinners!

I won’t give away any spoilers about who went out in this week’s bake off but Sam’s got a lot to live up to for next week...

Sam, Tilly and Holly met Simon for another session at Thorlands. It was Holly's second good deed as she was convince by her childhood friend, Tilly to come along.

Since we were a fairly small group, we decided to stay in the Walled Garden to continue with beautification of the walls and entrance.

Our first task of the day was to retrieve a pallet from around the corner next to the off-license as no one had claimed it and it's useful to use for vertical growing.

The task was done within ten minutes, but the next task would take more focus and a bit of health and safety. Normally, at GoodGym we do not use power tools for safety reason, but we were all keen to learn a new skill. We had a crash course on how to use a drill with Simon and once we felt comfortable using it, we proceeded to take it in turns to drill sticks into a wooden beam that will support the growth of the honeysuckle bush at the entrance "archway". There were 9 sticks to put up and we equally divided the amongst each other to put up....thus, practising our drilling skills. The result ended up being a masterpiece and we were impressed with our drilling abilities.

The session ended with a harvest as Simon kindly gave us a bag of leafy greens and herbs to take home.

We will be back to Thorlands on Wednesday evening for our group run to clear more of the Forest garden's reoccurring bindweed issue.

We were back at Thorlands as we are every Saturday to continue with the community garden project.

This week, Simon asked us to concentrate on the kitchen garden as we needed to get the woodchip bark down on the soil before it started to compost itself.

But, before we get into the nitty gritty, we had a new member show up with Tilly! It was Holly! A warm welcome Holly to GoodGym and to Thorlands. I hope you got to see what we're all about - getting fit and doing good. Even though, Kaz had done a couple of other Good Deeds in Lambeth and Wandsworth, this was his first at Thorlands - running 5k via Brixton to get there! 💪

We split the teams as soon as we arrived in the kitchen garden - we had Kaz, Holly and Tilly on clearing out the roots in the patch where we were going to lay down the cardboard and woodchip. They seem to find a family (ans their relatives) of worms as they digged out the bindweed roots. We rehoused the worms to the leave mound. Nathan had the job of cutting and clearing all the brambles that had piled up. Finally, Sam was raking all the leaves that had fell.

By the mid-way point, Jessie had shown up and started to dig out the soil against the wall as this was creating damp. Simon told me afterwards that the builders should have put gravel to ensure the water would drain under the building rather than create damp patches as soil obtains water. Building 101 lesson passed! ✅

Nathan and Sam noticed it was coming up to the end of the session, so we started to prepare the cardboard and turn the soil. Meanwhile, Kaz, Holly and Tilly had moved on to cutting back the buddleia tree.... giving it a fresh trim (back and sides).

By the end of the session, we had laid down the cardboard and put down all the remaining woodchip (next delivery in the Spring). It was a fantastic team effort and Simon was pleased with what we had done.

Don't forget on the 18th is our last Thorlands session of the year and so afterwards Simon is preparing mulled wine, mince pies and there is a wreath making session to join if you want.