You wouldn't know autumn 🍂 was long gone at St John the Evangelist Church's ⛪️ meadow, but GoodGymers are deft with a rake and keen to lend a hand 🤝

At Bridge House we introduced ourselves and answered tonight's question - What is your favourite leaf? We had answers like maple leaf, oak and monkey puzzle - a good selection! The run was a gradual incline over 2km, but kept us warm 🔥

Piles of plant matter were quickly put together as the team worked fast to uncover the grass and get those leaves into the composter where they can rot back into soil.

Job done, we enjoyed the downhill jog 🏃back to the pub.

Good stuff everyone! Next week Cat will be leading the run to the park, where we'll be prepping a fence for a painting...

Some top teamwork tonight as we took on two tasks at St John’s The Evangelist (many other St John churches are available).

We met at the Bridge House as usual, chatted over our favourite forms of light, from the horizon’s blade of sunlight at dawn to candles that smell of lychee, it was a warming selection.

We jogged over to the church where they have a beautiful community garden, some wild patches and a hell of a lot of leaves. We met Sara who had prepared many rakes, shears and a couple of big bags so we could...

🍂 Rake up all the leaves

✂️ Trim down the weeds in the wild area

🪵 Add the sticks to the bonfire pile

💰 Bagging up everything so it can rot down into 'brown gold' (I watched a film about soil the other day 🧐)

40 minutes later and we were all done - a good deed for the book and some nice chat and exercise too.

Nice one team 🏆

Not money, sadly, but leaves and good vibes!

We met at the Bridge House, introducing ourselves and discussing our ideal scarf. A couple of people raised the concept of scarf-blankets, which sounds like a great way to keep warm!

Thankfully it wasn't cold out - just a bit damp, so we headed out to our task at St John the Evangelist Church in Upper Norwood. We've helped the church to lay mulch, cut back weeds and more in the past, but tonight they wanted some help with the leaf fall 🍂 from the lovely trees in their meadow 🌳

We also moved some bags of last year's composted leaves over to a planter 🪴 ready to fertilise some new plants, and then replaced the compost in the two bags with this year's leaves, filling them to the brim!

Sterling raking, team 🪴

Another classic mulching task last night, this time at St John's Meadow, a delightful patch of green attached to St John's Church in Upper Norwood. They've had limited volunteers so Jenny really appreciated some GoodGym muscle with a few gardening tasks.

We kicked off at the Bridge House with names and who we'd want to lead the country. Some excellent non-political people - probably the way it should be?! It was Marie's first session with GG Bromley - lovely to have you join us!

We did a wee warm up en route to the meadow which included a few cheeky slopes... 🏔

When we arrived, most of us got straight into some weeding (Nick was on watering duty) around some of the fruit trees. When they were weed free we barrowed some mulch down the hill and spread it round the trees. Now the weeds will struggle to get through, and the tree roots will get all the water and goodness from the soil. 👌

We took a long route back and had a nice stretch before calling it a day.

Ace work, gang :) 💥✌️

5ive?! No, there were 7 of us actually.

Tonight's run was to St John's Meadow, a nice green patch which is tended to by some church volunteers. It's just been a long weekend so instead of our usual Monday, we went for a Tuesday!

Just like old times.

5 of us met at the Bridge House, discussed what we'd been up to over Easter and then hit the road. We met Hannah and Kat at the church as well as Jenny who showed us our task.

A huge pile of woodchip (made up of branches from nearby plane trees so low carbon footprint...kinda 🙄) sat at the top of the slope and at the bottom there were some paths between the veg beds which were looking a bit weedy and muddy. Our job was to get the paths covered and clearly defined.

We split into little groups, grabbed shovels and filled up 2 wheel barrows and a big bucket and transported it down to the vegetable patch. Nick mastered manoeuvring the particularly weird wheelbarrow which was apparently just left at the church one time. 🤷‍♂️

We were particularly nippy and got even more path covered and raked than we originally planned.

Team work makes the dream work ☁️

Nice one, gang. ✌️

Pun courtesy of Steve

Four wise men started the evening discussing their favourite books before heading off to CP park for a brisk warm up and a route through the park to their task… Alas, just like last week our path was blocked… But we had a shorter diversion this time -phew!

We arrived at St John’s Meadow, a little green space by a big old church for some leaf based work!

Jenny and Robin had prepared a selection of rakes and a whole lotta leaves for us to clear up! The trees are huge so I’m sure we’ll be heading back soon enough.

Our task was to rake the leaves into piles (or a line in Ian's case!) and then transport them to the compost piles. We filled up one builders bag first, wheelbarrowed a bunch over and finished off by dragging a full tarpaulin over!

It seemed like loads of leaves but there were still plenty on the ground even after we’d finished.

A great workout to warm us up on a cold evening… Ace work chaps! 🍂🍂🍂