Its been a while since I was at Ms Y flat. The last time was when I cleared the kitchen so that she could get the builder in for quotes and get the work done. Now the kitchen has been revamped and looks much better. New flooring, new cupboards, washing machine and fridge in place. The doors are straight and not hanging off. My task today was to unbox all the kitchen items I boxed on my last session before the works started. Less storage space as the fridge took over the space of the storage area, but now Ms Y can open all the cupboards as not in the way anymore. We did some declutter and ended up with 4 empty boxes and a big black bag of old unwanted items and rubbish of course. Ms Y likes to keep things and for some of them alot : check the amount of sponges she has. This cleared the lounge table : still boxes of books and paperwork which Ms Y has to find time to sort out. She will need to shred the paperwork that is not needed anymore. Books all over but Ms Y decided now to not keep all of them but still needs to decide which ones to keep. I also gathered all the tools in one area to free some space and filled a box of light bulbs and electrical items - Ms Y has enough bulbs to keep the Castle of Versailles bright - you light me up!!! Baby steps but getting there and more space for Ms Y

HANGOT and GoodGym were at the most easterly orchard today that HANGOT maintain at Osterley Lock, where they did a brilliant job.

"Once you clear around the fruit trees, it looks like an orchard again. Not only trees in a field." - Mirjam, task owner

Clearing around the fruit trees was top of the priority list for the GoodGymers, removing weeds and brambles, plus some pesky burdock. They were also keeping an eye out for any stones or branches that would damage blades as HANGOT's trained scythe operators would follow, slicing everything to the ground.

Steph, Kash and Sevan got clearing with shears and loppers around pear, apple and quince trees. They even learned how to tell if a quince was ripe. It's when it loses it's fuzz and pulls easily off the branch. All the orchard's quinces were still fuzzy, so still a few more weeks to wait.

Soon, they came across what looked like a fruit tree, but they didn't recognise what the strange looking fruit was. Mirjam came along to explain that it was medlar, which has a few names in French including "cul-de-chien" or "dog's bum hole". The resemblance was... well, a resemblance and the preparation of the fruit was as strange as it's appearance. HANGOT love the trees as they don't need much care, but the GoodGymers decided to stick to the more common fruits that could be eaten straight off the branch and didn't resemble body parts.

Steph moved on to raking and wheelbarrowing duty to finish off the session in another part of the orchard, collecting the scythed cuttings. He took immense pride in making a giant bramble burrito that he rolled to the compost pile.

We'll be back helping HANGOT next month in another orchard along the Grand Union Canal. More details to follow.