A cold a frosty morning began with parkrun for four of todays team.

Hilary joined Nick to celebrate his 100th Mile End parkrun Kevin and I headed to a very frosty Wanstead Flats.

A spot of breakfast before heading to meet up with Dimitra who had already arrived at The Up Garden.

Quick round of introductions before our list of tasks for the day off Suz.

1 paint pergola front legs turquoise back legs coral 2 bench turquoise and coral free choice of how 3 tape up and spray paint pergola roof panels

Suz was in charge of roof panel taping Kevin,Dimi and I tackled the pergola legs while Nick and Hilary brightened up the bench.

After completing the pergola we took it in turns to spray paint the panels.

Dimi headed off after an awesome effort of pergola leg painting...was great to meet you and thanks for all your effort today.

Suz then showed us the piano that had been donated and was made in Newham a mere 10 minutes walk from the garden....Hilary and Nick double checked it was tuned...it is.

We said our goodbyes and headed off.

A celebratory beer and food to finish off a wonderful day.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS ADDED THANKS TO SUZ

Tuesday we are heading to Hackney Adventure playground

Welcome back and thank you to the team who turned out for our first session of 2025. And what a great one to start with - sorting donations for Care4Calais at their East London storage facility.

We were met by one of their long term volunteers, Andy, who explained what needed to be done - essentially weed out any donations not worth keeping, and then sort the clothes into piles of similar items (childrens, mens, womens etc) - and that we could approach it in any way we liked... This brought back memories of similar "sorting" activities from our lockdown-era sessions for Crisis at Christmas and we were only to happy to put our experience into practice. We made a good dent into the big donations pile, leaving behind what we hope is a more usefully organised pile that can be distributed on to people seeking asylum across East London.

We'll be back there again in a couple of weeks (and potentially beyond if they still need our help...) - as the pictures show, it's dark, so please remember head torches if you've got them! We've also got some other great tasks lined up for January - Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground next week (soon to be listed) but also a long awaited return to the Up Garden on Saturday to do some painting - sign up here.