With what looked like a potential rainy Tuesday again, we were worried that we may not achieve our goal this week......

2 TASK TUESDAY

Michael, our resident weather man kept a watchful eye on the Met Office App and assured everyone that the rain would not be coming in until 20:00...

We met at our usual place and split into our two groups of runners and walkers, everyone was meeting at Cwtch Together tonight to begin with. The runners were the first to arrive, just in time to meet with Flo who had made their own way to the task to donate their old dolls for use at the charity play group.

That deserves an extra deed

Michael said Helo to Jon, who was meeting us tonight in place of our usual Sarah. We quickly got the tools out to help with the garden. Michael meandered around the grounds, before briefing Flo who was taking ownership of the task tonight at Cwtch. There were some brambles starting to come through, as well as some 'Lords & Ladies' (Arum maculatum) popping up so the strimmer was needed to remove these, especially the 'Lords & Ladies' before it goes to seed in Autumn and spreads anymore.

Once the walking group arrived, we split into two groups for the second task. We bid farewell to Emma, Emma, Flo and Neda who were going to take on the Cwtch task.

Heading over to the Grange Medical Practice were, Michael, Aimee, Emily and Llion. We were greeted by Chris from Grow Cardiff, we had been here just 2 weeks earlier (read all about that here). Tonight's call was to get the soil delivery into the raised beds...

Shovels at the ready

Straight to work, we were digging soil from a bag straight into the beds on one side, whilst emptying another into wheelbarrows on the opposite side. Some strange conversations as Michael suddenly burst into song with a rendition of the theme tune to Poddington Peas..'Why' I hear you ask.... we still don't know.

This was a great workout with some heavy lifting added in once the bags were empty enough to lift straight into the raised beds. A great day this week with two tasks completed (3 with Flo's donations), thanks to all for joining in.

Join us next week for some fence painting fun, sign up here

Tonight was our return to the Grow Cardiff project at the Grangetown Medical Centre, we hadn't been here for a year when the project first started. During this time, they had managed to secure some money to create a more accessible site, so we were welcomed with a brand new flooring and the start of the new beds.

We met Chris and had a brief chat about the time inbetween our visits, before getting to the list of jobs for the evening.

• Move slabs to the rear of the centre.
• Infill compost bins with green waste.
• Water the fruit trees / plants behind the medical centre.
• Litter pick around the centre.
• Move surplus building materials to the rear of the centre.
• Sort area under the Cherry Tree, level the soil,
• Remove rubble from borders.

A lot of work and what looked to be a great workout on a glorious sunny evening. No time to stand about, lets get to it!

Before we had even arranged the garden jobs, Jonathan and Neda were out litter picking in the sunshine. Gold Star to you both....⭐

Su and Imy were onto the borders, taking out any large stones and moving them to the large middle planter. Lucy was sweeping and cleaning, Adam (after breaking the rake) was on leveling duty with Dylan.

Darren and Andrew were with wheelbarrows, moving bricks, slabs and rubble from behind the polytunnel to behind the medical centre. Martin, took to the green waste compost area and filled it, then joining the wheelbarrow crew to build their very own Jenga stack.

It was a great evening helping and we certainly kept ourselves fit tonight. Well deserved food after the run....

Join us next week as we will be keeping with the Nature theme this month over at Cwtch Together.

A wonderful light evening, sunshine and a brand new project to help - It must be a goodgym Tuesday.

Tonight was our first visit to Grow Cardiff's newest project at Grange Medical Centre, the space that they have been given is very large with great potential......We will certainly be having a return trip here. Grow Cardiff have been going since June 2015, and have some really inspiring community gardens set up around the city.

Their mission is to inspire people to use community gardening not only to grow fantastic vegetables, herbs, trees and flowers, but through this to build caring and inclusive communities where everyone can thrive.

With such goals, goodgym are a great group to get involved and help.

It was a shorter run than usual, but with so much to do the added volunteering time was useful. Our jobs for the evening were,

• remove the layer of manure from the garden and move it to the compost heap
• build a compost heap
• remove all grass and weeds from the seating and pathways
• litter pick
• lay cardboard and woodchip on pathways

We had nice new gloves ready to wear and all the tools needed for the jobs, so it was straight to work. We got to meet a few of the locals who were also going to get involved with the project, nice to see the project already gaining volunteers. After 40 minutes of shovelling, wheelbarrow moving, pulling of plants and laying of woodchip it was time to step back and see the results of our efforts. There was a very visible difference to the plot today, and a great feeling of satisfaction.

Thanks to all, Grow Cardiff for task and you lovely volunteers to help spread the goodgym joy.

Get signed up for the next task here, as we get our painting task on again

After the downpour and blowy gusts of Tuesday, it was a pleasant change to meet for the first time on a Thursday for our task. The sun was out (even if still a bit nippy) and we were raring to go.

Just a short hop from the start location, the walkers left first whilst the rest waited until 18:30 for everyone. Then the joggers headed off, just a hop, strip and a jump to the task. A much longer day of volunteering tonight, but it would be well worth it - with a whopping 50 minutes of digging.

We were back outside the Riverside Medical Centre, to help on their community garden which is led by Grow Cardiff. The last time we were here was back in January 2022 when we helped to fill their very first - and at the time only raised bed.

What a change

Now with some much new growing space, it really was an oasis of a garden just brilliant for people to get some time to relax and unwind. But that's enough time looking at pretty things, we are here to complete a task!

Today we were going to be laying some wildflower turf, but there was 'prep' work to get done first. So we rolled it out in position, then cut around it with an edging tool, moved the turf back out of the way. Now came the spades, we had to remove the grass that already there so that we could finally put the turf in it's new home.

We got into teams and got down and dirty whilst 'Joined at the strip'. A team removed the old turf in a wheelbarrow as it came flying from all around.

And finally, we were done.

This was our first time helping out with the new community space at Riverside Health Centre, another wonderful project from Grow Cardiff for more social prescribing. We met up at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Canton as they were donating some old turf to help fill the raised planters.

We met up with Chris from Grow Cardiff who had the vehicle all ready to load up, there were already boxes and bags of twigs on there, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work, squatting and lifting the rolled up turf. It was a great workout for the morning but we weren't finished yet, just as the turf was all loaded it was time to take a quick jog over to Riverside to unload it.

The planter had already had some larger twigs and old greenery put into them, so we used the smaller twigs, greenery, even an old wreath to fill nay gaps. We packed everything tightly, layered with some leaves and compacted a bit more with feet - like squeezing grapes. Now came to turf, this we off loaded it and unrolled it into the planter until it was all off the vehicle and the planters were a good 3/4 full. Just the compost to go when that arrives for them later on in the week and the planting can begin.

A successful morning well worth a quick break with a coffee and some biscuits.

On our first DOUBLE DEED of the year (January challenge standard), we made our way to our newest task at St. John's Church in Canton.

Our first time here, we were welcomed by Chris who is also going to be using us for another new task next Saturday helping to set up the new community garden at Riverside Health Centre. All part of the wonderful Grow Cardiff's 'Grow Well project'

But back to the task at hand, Andrew was looking after this task and arrived with boxes of bulb and rhizomes. We introduced ourselves as he explained that we were planting in the crescent of the Church land to create an inclusive community garden for everyone to use and enjoy. Some of the local residents had already planted some so we were playing catch up.

We planted a few different things, bluebells, snake's head (fritillaries) and something that looked like twiglets. In just under an hour we had planted everything that had been given to us, so a quick group photo and now we hope for good weather so that they can grow.

Get signed up for next Saturday HERE

Why not come out with us all on Tuesday for a group activity and exercise? Get signed up HERE