It was back the Hervey Road today for lots of lovely Good Gymers, where a garden and wildflower area is slowly being created alongside the sports fields. The sun was threatening to come out but earlier rains had softened the ground from concrete-like (our last mission there) to quite soft, and there were new jobs to be done.

Today the team broadly split into two, with one group diligently removing the thistles and other weeds, and the other uncovering the old path, which had become quite overgrown, and laying down new chippings. Many thistles were found including some extremely large specimens and multiple bags were soon full of these pesky weeds. The pathfinding was slower, with care needed to ensure that we didn’t go beyond what could be covered with new bark but, despite this, around 10 metres was refreshed and the new path almost followed the route of the old one.

All that remained after that was some very fine weeding to separate the last few unwanted plants from a dense area of more valuable ones before a chat with Annie and Richard, the wonderful organisers, after which we left the garden with it looking mush refreshed

On a balmy summer's evening we gathered to hear tales of our inspiring and interesting books that we've read recently. After some quick warm ups we headed over to the Hervey Road Sports Field for some more gardening with Annie. We teamed up- team one were the watering crew and we got busy watering all the trees which were struggling in the heat and all of the new shoots and borage which we planted last time we were there. It's lovely to see the progress of the garden and watch the plants grow. The other team did an excellent job weeding around the lavender.

Grateful for an evening of gardening with friends and feeling like we've done some good. Next week we're litter picking in Woolwich and the 28th is our joint task and social with Camden- don't miss it!

Until next time 😊

Football? What football?! On Wednesday evening the sun finally shone again as four GoodGymers met at Charlton House. After a nice lap of the park, we headed off to Hervey Road sports ground to help Richie with some tasks in the community garden. We were delighted to see the wildflower seeds recently planted were begin to grow, so one group was given the task of weeding the grass from this area. Richie told us the plan to germinate Yellow Rattle here (he’d traveled all the way to Scotland for the seeds!) which will help the wildflower meadow thrive. The second group was given the task of turning the compost, creating ‘lasagna layers’ of compost and dried grass. After a final fight with some determined brambles, we headed off (after solving the issue of having been locked in the grounds for the night!).

Well done team!

On a lovely balmy summers evening, an intrepid group of GoodGymers assembled at the regular meeting point on the front steps of Charlton House, which looked particularly resplendent in the summer sunshine ☀️

Special welcome to Mo who joined us from Lewisham - great to have you with us Mo and look forward to running with you again soon!

After a brief into and warm-up (only figuratively speaking as we were already very warm! 😆) we made our way to the lovely Hervey Road Sports Field community gardens.

There we were greeted by the lovely Annie and Richard who were quick to designate out the tasks between us. As there were 6 GoodGymers for this task we divided up into three groups.

One group were cutting grass and inverting the soil around for some more wildflower meadows. Another group was weeding the newly planted lavender at the side of the carpark. This was because they were wanting to erect a small wooden fence there to prevent the cars from driving over the soil and ruining the lavender when they parked.

The third group were given the task of separating wood and unwanted elements from the compost in some large plastic sieves. This task included a lot of shaking the sieves to get the soil out with the wood chip removed. It was a lot of fun and paid off in the end when we were able to produce some beautiful soil for the garden.

As the work finished, we all felt very pleased with ourselves for what we had achieved. It is especially lovely to be outdoors on a warm summers evening. Annie and Richard are always grateful for the work that we do, and we had a quick group photo and before we knew it was time to head back to Charlton House.

The warm evenings often mean the pace is a bit slower, but the upside is we get to chat a bit more and enjoy the lovely area of London that we live in. Roll on summer and roll on the next GoodGym task!

After some bike orienteering, I found the sports field, which was strangely empty for a beautiful Sunday. Richard gave me a pitchfork and I could get started on the weeding. It was mostly about removing tussocks of grass from a lavender bed. The ground was dry and hard, so we managed about 4 square metres in 1h40.

Last night we were back at Hervey Road to do some weeding and digging over the soil to plant wildflowers. The trouble was, and I think we all look back on this with quite some confusion, we were actually using oars to dig the soil. We thought they were spades and forks but clearly looking back at the photos, well they were oars. I don't know where to go from here, it's just rather embarrassing isn't it?

Despite this faux pas we did a pretty great job all in all. As Quora reliably informs us, "'using the right tool for the job'" emphasizes the importance of selecting the appropriate tool or method for a particular task or problem at hand. Just as using the correct tool can make a job easier, more efficient, and successful, using the wrong tool can lead to inefficiency, errors, and potentially even failure."

Did anyone else read that last sentence quickly and instead of failure fill in the word 'death'?

We may have been inefficient and expended more energy but as far as I know we are all still alive. AND we got an oarsome photo in there too = success.

As they say, when the rowing gets tough, the tough get rowing.

And we are tough aren't we?

In other news we spotted a frog, which lethargically hopped away too quick to evidence with a picture.

Well done team and lovely to see you as always! We're back at Christchurch next week.

Until next time!