This Monday we were back helping Mulgrave Street Action Group with their Urban Space Community Garden. After our litter picking efforts last week, the area was now nice and clear and ready for the next step - digging up all the pesky weeds! Our first challenge was actually identifying the weeds and minimising unnecessary plant casualties. Khan had far too much faith in our weed spotting abilities and was surprised when further clarification was required. As Bekah rightly pointed out though, the definition of a weed is not set - a poppy could be considered a weed in a field of sunflowers! After decanting all the required equipment from the shed, we were ready to get cracking with the gardening…or so we thought….It turned out the pile of binbags we had formed was merely a collection of plastic aprons! Very handy for a painting task I guess, but not so much for collecting weeds in. Luckily eagle eyed Chris spotted a roll of bags camouflaged amongst the pile and we were able to crack on with the task at hand. Whilst the majority of the group started tackling the weeds, some of the stronger members got to dumping all the litter bags from last week and the contents of a green bin (which unfortunately passersby had been using as a general rubbish disposal place) into the skip. As 8pm approached, the garden was looking much clearer with plenty of space for the new planting planned for our next visit. Khan was very pleased with the result and grateful as always for all our help. After taking the all important group photo we headed on our way, looking forward to returning to the garden in a months time!

We safely teetered down the hill on our first snowy-icy session for 2026 with run leader Sallyann showing how to do it with abundant balance!

It still felt Christmassy with...

• a layer of ice under a dash of snow

• zero temperature

• northern light photaes with our crazy head torches (courtesy of our fab photoers Steph & Naser & Leonardo)

• also the Christmas chatterings of course!

It was lovely catching up with each other after the Christmas break.

Also we met some lovely new members Amani and Karen , of the amazing Siân noless.

Welcome, welcome and we hope to see more of you in 2026. We also welcomed our newly stolen member from Islington too Alison - yeah for us!

Elaine arrived and explained we had done such a good job on the nettles and thistles it was now time to tackle some of the floor covering weeds too hopefully to give some of the non-weeds a chance in the spring. Those floor covering weeds also included litter which always a joy to clear up!

Seven bags later we felt we had made a good start to 2026 and put to bed our last days of 2025.

Thank you all for turning up in the cold and giving that good doing warmth and I cannot wait to spend more of my 2026 doing good with you guys and guyettes xxx

Today we were back to see Pat at one of our favourite regular task sites, the wonderful Greenhouse Project on Lodge Lane, which is a multi-cultural early years education centre focused on play, arts and nature. We have helped out there in a variety of ways over the years including mulching, cleaning, litterpicking, pruning, weeding, and even sticking leaves to a hedge, but tonight was our lovely annual task of gift wrapping presents for the local children who attend the Greenhouse. As it usually is, this was our last task of the year, and a treat to be indoors at this time of year for a cosy, festive evening fuelled by mince pies and full of chatter and good cheer.

With such lovely vibes the gift wrapping is always a very popular task, and this year we outdid ourselves with nineteen attendees including not one, not two but three new members turning out for their first task - welcome Craig, Tsitsi and Saoirse! We weren't even sure if we would all fit into the one room but luckily everyone managed to squeeze in to find a big pile of toys, games, craft sets and art supplies waiting to be wrapped. With so many keen volunteers we had all of the gifts wrapped and labelled super quickly, leaving plenty of time for chatting and catching up before the end of the session. Steph H showed us a video of her performing her excellent solo at the wonderful Choir With No Name Christmas gig a few days ago. Lucien and I will be leaving Liverpool at Christmas time and although we will definitely be back to visit - and hopefully soon - we aren't sure when or even if we will be back to live, so the group gave us a lovely send-off at what could be our last task for a while with a very thoughtful card and present, and a beautiful speech given by Sallyann. We will miss you all so much!

On this bittersweet note we all said our goodbyes, wishing everyone a happy holiday, and set off into the cold outside, warmed from the inside by the happy glow of another year of doing great things as part of an amazing community.