Hot Saturday afternoon and I was joined by Maxime for his 1st mission which we have been talking for a bit. We went to Mr R who is a regular for the Ealing crew. Today, it was the back garden. We have to clear weed in the flower beds and clear the area by the bamboo of unwanted weed and grass. Mr R asked if we could also. if we had time clear the weed by his shed at the far end of the garden. The Frenchies got on with it and did all that was requested : filled 2 big bags of unwanted greenery. Cleared the weed and we had some grasshoppers and colorful millipedes or Polydesmida moving around. Mr R was pleased as accomplished all he wanted. Well done on your 1st mission Maxime and hopefully many more to come.

On a hot, sunny Saturday, the June edition of the HANGOT workday took us to Elthorne Terraces Orchard (or the one "by the Bambi") to deal with unfair competition against fruit trees. Hemlock, brambles, nettles, burdock - we didn't want to see any of that around the orchard tree trunks. Another problem was caused by the fruit trees themselves - tree suckers and self-seeded saplings were stealing nutrients from the originally planted trees and had to be removed.

Six regulars from the HANGOT crew: Mirjam, Clive, Hilary, Magda, Chris and Brian were joined by four GoodGymers, making the team size a decent, round number! The towpath was a lovely route to get to the task. Penny walked to the session while Christos, Steph Ducat and Kash ran different distances to reach the orchard. Steph arrived early, as usual, and Mirjam put him on his favourite watering duty to keep him busy before others showed up.

Walking down the canal path towards Brentford, the GoodGymers saw a pair of swans with five cygnets. Clive said the bird couple had been trying to have babies for a long time, facing challenges like a flooded nest and soggy eggs, and, finally, was lucky to glide upstream with a line of their little ones between them. What a sight it was!

At Elthorne Terraces we saw more examples of nature thriving, such as a quince tree producing plenty of fruit! They weren't ripe yet, of course, but we learned where the quince spot was - a handy knowledge when the foraging season comes! Life does not always prevail - at Elthorne Terraces, we found out that one of the fruit trees had died, and we have been chosen to help it with its last journey. Christos sawed the tree, and Kash chucked its trunk into the bushes like a javelin. Farewell tree! May the circle of life make good use of your remains!

The summer is looking fantastic, and we want to take advantage of long days in June to help HANGOT more than once a month! Join us on Monday in a week's time for a work evening at the canalside orchards - sign up here!

After a couple of months break, GoodGym Ealing were back at the wonderful London Transport Museum Depot in Acton to partner with All Aboard Club. Overlooking the full size tube trains and buses, the task as always was to build a unique and giant train set for autistic and SEN children.

As usual, everyone started building their own vision, then tried to work out how to connect it to everyone else's pieces of track. Michelle and Sevan started working on neighbouring towns, so had the "how on earth do we connect these?" problem early on, before going on to create and resolve chaos in other parts of the train network.

One of the regular volunteers had grand designs for his track and he wasn't afraid of telling people about them. He told Sevan, then other volunteers how his 4 parallel stretches of track would branch off and merge together with other parts, leading to task owner Richard to say:

"Less talk, more build" - Richard

...and so he did, turning what was in his mind into blue plastic art.

Once set up, the All Aboard Club attendees almost arrived on time, which is rare as they're so excited to get to play with the trains. They were only 5 minutes early today. Another surprise was that they didn't immediately start to rip up and change the lovingly created track. Maybe the troublemakers are away this month 😂.

If you'd like to become a big child for an hour, you can join us next month to help All Aboard Club get their big train set ready at the London Transport Museum Depot. Sign up here for the 12th of July.

Friday lunch time service and the weather was very hot today outside reaching 29degres which means it was very hot in the kitchen and in the crypt of the church. Freya was on clothes and Jacquie was on kitchen duties, serving lunch then helping to clear up. Menu today :

• Roast Chicken Dinner
• Veggie Sausages Both serve with honey glazed parsnips, carrots, mashed potato and onion gravy
• Jelly & Ice Cream

Ice cream is the best dessert in hot weather.

You might have heard in the past that Thursday is the new Friday, but in Ealing, Thursday is the new Tuesday! This week, we trialled a non-Tuesday evening group run to give people with schedules different from our regular group a chance to get fit while doing good.

After a brief warm-up - as the evening felt nice and summery - Sevan led a group of four runners 1 km south of Ealing Broadway towards St Mary's Church. Although the run was short, two GoodGymers took an extra challenge: running with laptops in their bags, coming straight from work! Among them was a new joiner: Ayesha. Welcome to GoodGym, Ayesha!

At the destination, GoodGymers Sevan, Ayesha, Steph Ducat and Kash met Cliff, a volunteer passionate about keeping the church garden in shape. That job became a challenge when the weeds shot up in the spring after a group of garden volunteers shrunk earlier in the year. Cliff was determined to make the garden presentable for the arrival of the new vicar in early August. He chipped away on that task every now and then on free evenings and weekends, but the weeds were a formidable army that kept coming back.

Cliff decided on a section to be cleared today and handed our team forks, adzes and a mattock. The overgrown surface was not a small one, so we got right into the task. Cliff was surprised to discover that a heap of weeds he had cleared earlier has moved. Was that a ghost from the cemetery in the garden? After closer examination, we revealed that the pile of garden waste was concealing a lime bike! Hiding a lime bike in your garden is naughty - but disguising it in a graveyard under a heap of weeds is a totally different level of mischief! Interestingly, just a few minutes after the bike was freed, it disappeared, taken by someone in need of a ride. It was reassuring to know that the lime bike was alive and not ready to end up buried in the graveyard.

We worked away, listening to Cliff's stories about people camping in the church garden and even setting a fire to heat up dinner packed in a plastic container. A charred log we saw was proof it was not some tall tale at all.

In an hour, we made impressive progress, finishing our section and uncovering the path to the compost heap. Ayesha learnt some new skills by trying out different tools. The Thursday group run was a success, and we are already looking forward to another session at St Mary's to help the community make the best impression on the new vicar!

Chunky soups were on Ealing Food Bank's shopping list this month, so a chunky can-heavy shop was done before tonight's group run to St Mary's.