This morning was our third visit to Greenhill allotments to help prep Magrets plot.

We continued to work our way down the plot pulling up weed and clearing grass.

The weeds had taken over this section, with deep and chunky roots. Digging them up was very satisfying!

There’s still plenty to do here and I’m sure we will be back again.

It was a gorgeous day for our second visit to Magret’s plot and our link up with Newcastle Parks and Allotments. We made a start on clearing the plot a couple of weeks ago. Sadly there were already some weeds flourishing in the area we had cleared so we spent some time clearing that area, before moving on to the next section.

It seems like our memo about axes from a different task this week has filtered through and Aimee in particular was delighted to see the presence of an axe today! Max put it to good use, breaking up the ground, which seemed harder this time than last time, probably due to the warm sunshine we’ve had lately! Tanya, on the other hand, was less successful with the tools, choosing a spade with the diggy bit (that’s a technical term!) coming off the handle as soon as she tried digging!

There was a spell during the task when we felt like we weren’t getting anywhere, but then it all came together. You can definitely see that we made progress today! And it was lovely to be joined by some local wildlife, although we’re not sure how healthy the bee was! The cat, however, seemed very content basking in the sunshine!

There’s still a way to go though. Fortunately, we’re back again next Saturday. There’s rain forecast for this week so the ground should be a bit softer. We’d love to see you there!

It was a day of meetings today. We met Marie who joined us for her first GoodGym task - welcome Marie! We also met task owner Sue and perhaps most importantly we met Magret who has been allocated the garden we were working on today. A delay in starting caused by a very reluctant, rarely used very large padlock allowed us to learn that Magret arrived in the UK from Zimbabwe around 14 years ago, worked for years as a carer for people with learning difficulties until her eyesight began to fail around five years ago. This is the reason that Magret needs our help with clearing the overgrown garden so that she can benefit from it. We discovered that Adam was able to say hello in one of the languages spoken in Zimbabwe! Together with Marie being French we had a lively conversation about learning different languages!

After a quick trip home, Sue came back with a can of WD40 which did the trick with the padlock so we were able to get started. Two hours in the spring sunshine, discussions about various TV programmes and lots of digging and raking later, and we had cleared the first section of Magret's garden. There’s a lot of work still to do and we’ll definitely arrange more sessions, but for now, Magret was very happy with the start we made and is looking forward to growing some onions! We look forward to seeing the progress in the garden. For now, marvel at our before and after photos!