It was back to Walter Halls School for Leah, Khiltee, Natalie and Peter to help out in their wonderful garden.

It's always a good one when we're here and Adele always manages to find us a wide range of interesting and varied tasks. This week, Perspex sheets needed shifting, weeds needed lifting, the banks of the pond needed raising and a pick axe was (again) wielded!

So, it was gloves on and (already short) sleeves rolled up as sand bags were filled and tucked neatly under the pond liner. Big rocks were then placed on top This should allow a higher water level so the school can get the wildlife the pupils keeps asking for in there.

Congratulations to Peter on achieving 50 good deeds and black t-shirt status!

We were back at Windmill Community Gardens again this week for another session.

The already expansive Gardens have grown again with the adoption of a new, wildly overgrown plot, and our host Lucy gave us a tour to start things off.

There were a few jobs to do in anticipation of their Art in the Garden event this weekend (pop along if you can!) so we quickly split up into a few groups to get as much as we could done in the time we had.

Peter started off clearing some rubbish left over from the shed removal, including a particularly foul-smelling bucket (kudos for your strong stomach, my friend!). Once that was up in the skip, he joined Leah, Nigel and brand-new GoodGymers Khiltee and Dina (Welcome!) in clearing weeds and overgrown foliage from the new children's area. Hazards included ants and other bugs and some particularly prickly bushes with very deep roots.

Rosemarie and Dayna had arguably the toughest task of lugging woodchip from the pile at the entrance right the way down to the bottom of the gardens to cover the pathways that had rotted down or become overgrown. Nigel and Khiltee also grabbed some buckets to cover the floor of the teepee and the old shed foundations.

We ended the session munching on some delicious, freshly-picked fruit!

We returned to Carrington Community Gardens on a sunny (but thankfully slightly cooler) evening for a second round of clearing the overgrowth. We met Councillor Nayab Patel again on arrival before setting to work. On our last visit we made a start on clearing the main pathway and this time we turned our attention to some of the other areas that have become untidy and filled with weeds and brambles.

We all agreed that some of the best tasks involve us just being able to pull things out of the ground as it gives us both a physical workout and a satisfying psychological boost. What isn't quite so fun is negotiating the thorny branches which seemed worse than ever on this occasion, or maybe our gardening gloves just weren't quite thick enough. Either way, we all got a few pricks along the way, but we still managed to fill 8 bags of cuttings and unearth some litter and a mirror. Thankfully, our work was rewarded and our minds distracted from our thorn-filled fingers by Nayab's treat bag which was once again generously filled with muffins and crisps!

As we prepared to take our group photo at the end, we were joined by two police officers who were on the beat in the local area. They were very interested in what GoodGym do and thankful that we were in the community garden to clear it up rather than set up a camp! They even helped out by taking our group photo with Nayab.

A few milestones to mention - Vytautas hs just hit 10 tasks, Matthew has now done 15 tasks and Rosemarie recently reached 20. Well done to them all! We also have Peter and Tom edging very close to some big milestones which we look forward to celebrating very soon!

Rachel and Stephanie (and Stephanie’s husband, Verety) headed to the United Reformed Church, Sherwood to help set up for the Sherwood Art Week craft fair.

Our task was to put up the bunting in the entrance and outside of the church to make it look more colourful and inviting to guests. This was exactly what we did the previous year, so luckily we could refer back to the photos of last year’s task to remind ourselves what we hung where. This meant we were far quicker with far less faffing around this year, and had all our bunting up and swaying in the wind within 50 minutes.

A big thank you to Verety who came along with Stephanie and became chief hanger-upper due to his superior height!

Shout-out to Peter for the egg-cellent pun!

We were back at the AMC Gardens last night for an evening of tussling with weeds, compost and some rather worse-for-wear wood.

All six of us arrived under our own steam, with a trio running from town, two on bikes and a solo runner! Great work, team!

After a tour for those of us who hadn't been to the Gardens before, we got stuck into shifting compost from the main bins to some tarps as Katie and the team felt the bins had seen better days and needed reconstructing. Nigel, Aj, Peter and Leah got stuck in with spades, pitchforks and wheelbarrows, managing to clear most of the ready compost and some that was still rotting down into separate piles. Their work clearly had an impact on the local wildlife, with the chickens inspecting every barrow-load for tasty treats and a rogue frog scaring the bejeesus out of Leah (stronger language may have been used, but this is a family website). Katie thankfully moved it out to the pond area for a good drink and a splash. Finally, Leah and Peter began the process of dismantling the old bins, ripping out the old liners and some of the wood.

Meanwhile, Bozena and Tom were over in the gardens proper clearing out some of the beds to make space for planting. The proceeds were then donated to the compost piles the rest had been creating.

We finished our evening with some delicious freshly picked apricots and some well-earned water. What a way to spend a lovely balmy evening!

Leah headed up to Walter Halls School to help out at their annual Dig Day.

She arrived towards the end of the event, but Adele quickly set her to work helping to create planters out of tyres. The soil was bone dry, so she used the GoodGym muscle to lug watering cans down to the tap.

Just before she left, she got a glimpse of the new pond we helped dig getting filled with water! We're all so impressed with how it turned out!