Tonight we headed to Oasis Foundry School, were we did a group litter pick across from the school and then in the wildlife area.

Amy and Sofeen met us at the task. We started across from the school, then finished in the wildlife area and too our pleasant surprise were joined by the Al-Paca's. They even joined us for a picture :)

Once done we headed back to 1000 Trades and that was about 6k done in total.

Tonight we were helping out at Oasis Foundry, but at a slightly different venue, just up the road. We were at the Bolton Foundry Academy.

After just over 3k of running we arrived to be greeted by Megan and joined by Amy. The task was to move some wooden pallets from Megans car, sand them down and paint them, ready to be used as planters.

We quickly got to work with plenty of sanding. After that we had to get the Ronseal tins of paint open (hence this weeks pun after that advert!) We got them all painted before a quick selfie by Liam, with paint brushes in the air!

Liam then took us on a slightly different route back to 1000 Trades.

Five festive goodgymers went to the Oasis Foundry School for one of our favourite tasks, the next stage of the wildlife area being developed for the school. I was met by a large welcoming party of friends from GoodGym, the school and the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust; but most importantly, four friendly Alpacas! We wasted no time getting down to business, with Jake showing the size of the turf we needed to dig up and the spacing required to turn the trees we were planting into a vibrant hedgerow. He explained how vital it was going to be for encouraging wildlife into the area along with the pond and bee mound we had helped with previously, which we admired as the finishing touches have been made. We assigned Fiona the tasks of photographer, cheerleader and general motivator as she was suffering with a bad back. As much as she did this with great aplomb as we began digging trenches, she also took on the role of tree expert. After some training she was able to tell the difference between a Hawthorn tree and other trees, until she forgot the name and started calling them Mulberry Bushes. I dug squares of earth with Balal and David on one side of the gate while Miriam joined Megan from the school on the other side. All of our respective trenches met in slightly wonky joins but this will make the mature effect look more natural, or at least that’s our story. That’s when we got our resident tree expert in to help arrange the planting, and we were soon filling in the holes with soil and upturned turf. I must admit I had a bit of a DIY SOS emotional moment looking at all the parts of this area that members of our group have been involved with, as I know this area well and can imagine what it will mean for the wellbeing and learning for the children. In the midst of the extremes of this year, it is going to have a hopeful impact on the local community as we look forward to better times.

We returned to complete the pond at Oasis Foundry. I got a surprise seeing Mahnaz as we had met before at my running sessions in Handsworth Park. This was the first time she had met most of the goodgymers in attendance though, so she gave a lot of reassurances when she mentioned her background in a gardening apprenticeship.

We had some time to catch up as we waited for Jake from the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust to arrive. When he did, the others got a brief about what we wanted to achieve, then we got all the tools together and got started.

It was great to see how much Ryan had cleared out in the time he stayed on Monday. It really helped us. I began by breaking up the ground with the heavy fence pole while the rest of the group got on with shovelling soil, and lots of bricks, from the area. Tousif joined me as there was an extra pole today, and soon we were digging out what seemed to be an old fireplace. Jake was thinking creatively about what to do with the bricks and excess soil, creating a bee mound with the soil and lining the fire pit under the shelter with the bricks. Myself, Annie and Mahnaz were then asked to take another layer of turf away, around the circumference of the pond, which he would use to keep the liner in place. This gave Annie a chance to see how easy Jake made it look, and she was able to do a good impression of how difficult me and Miriam made it look on Monday.

Soon enough, we had the shelf layer completed, and Jake was happy when he checked his spirit level. So we all cracked on with digging out another couple of feet into the middle section. As we were starting to hit some of the softer soil, it turned 12 and I had to run off to the other community mission. However, Tousif, Mahnaz and Liam stayed on as the rain began to pour and managed to dig through the mud in order to get the pond liner down.

Hopefully we will see the pond come to life soon as we return to maintain the wildlife area. We love it already and the children at the school are certainly going to as well.

On a sunny Monday morning, Balal, John, Miriam and Ryan went to Oasis Foundry Academy to get started on digging a pond for the school. We were met by Megan from the school and Jake from the Wildlife Trust, who talked us through what we were going to do and gave us the tools for the job before we got cracking.

We were digging the hole entirely from scratch so after Jake had measured out the area, we got started by removing the turf - hence today's pun. Ryan told us that he grew up on a farm so he was by far the most effective, putting us city slickers to shame! But Jake was very helpful and gave us some really useful tips to remove the turf.

Once the turf was removed, Jake roughly outlined the shape of the pond and we started to remove the soil. This proved to be quite difficult as the land was previously built upon so there were a lot of bricks and stones in the soil. Fortunately Jake had a chisel digging bar which somewhat helped to soften the earth and remove some of the bricks.

Before we knew it, it was 12:00 and time to go home, but Miriam and Ryan were kind enough to stay behind and help further, removing as much soil as possible before our next visit on Thursday, when we hope to finish the job!

We usually help out at the Oasis Foundry School but we had a change of venue tonight for the Community Mission at another school in the Academy chain, Oasis Boulton. After exchanging a few messages on WhatsApp, we worked out where we were all heading and made our separate ways to the middle of Handsworth.

We joined Megan to see the different projects going on at this school around the community building they have on site. We began by pulling up weeds, picking litter and spreading the topsoil around the extremely raised front garden. This gave the four of us a great chance to reconnect and chat in a compact space which was still big enough to give us socially distant space, but small enough for us to hold conversations, apart from when motorbikes and buses passed by. Fiona especially was overjoyed to get to meet back up with us after such a long time and we all greeted with Covid friendly elbow bumps.

Afterwards, we went to the back of the building, where Megan had given us the task of clearing a distinctly overgrown rectangular planter. Inside were some plants that really didn’t want to be pulled up by hand, with the kind of thorns that can get through all of the best gardening gloves. The kind of thing that doesn’t stop us as we used the forks to loosen up the soil and get them out. The hour flew by as we were left with just a bit of bagging up and sweeping to get the area tidy again. As we were clearing up, the caretaker's cat turned up to say hello, and turned out to be really sociable, which you would imagine it might be with a few hundred 4-11 year olds turning up every weekday! A quick selfie to show the progress we made out front (and show off my lockdown castaway look) then we said our goodbyes as I turned to run across Handsworth and the others ran back to the Jewellery Quarter.