Fabulous Good Friday fun at the Tiny Forest as the remarkable Yorkie GoodGymers descended en masse to tend the trees. The saplings have reached their first anniversary and are looking good. Buds have unravelled revealing fresh lush leaves. Wildlife is moving in & today's spots included frog, mouse, kestrel & pretty iridescent bugs. After some light weeding, mulching, mound moving & trough filling the chatter & banter continued around the picnic table. Wonderful work everyone tending tiny trees for the future.

After delivering my gift of compost and a Christmas tree, I joined birthday boy Al, Claire and Miki who were already hard at work weeding. Claire was using her amazing claw fingers to scrape away the weeds like a green-fingered cat! Great progress was made and the forest is looking beautiful in the sunshine.

We then sat down to a cuppa and a slice of plum-upside-down birthday cake (thanks Claire!) and a chat about aliens, before heading off to enjoy our days.

Another sunny morning on Kimberlow Hill, another bathtub sunk for our tiny forest! We also did some weeding before taking a break to enjoy some home-baked goods around the picnic table.

Not content with one sunny tree-related task this jolly Saturday, some of us headed on to our Tiny Forest for a second. We were joined by Lace and welcomed by Mickey who gave us an introduction and instructions. The patch was looking great but more maintenance was needed before the trees could become self-sustaining. We therefore set to work weeding and digging up grass that had sprung up in patches between the trees. James even got to plant a tree, which was pretty fitting for his 100th good deed. Good work James.

And to top it all off, Claire had brought an incredible picnic with sandwiches, flapjack and muffins and even a flask of coffee with cups to go round. What a treat, thank you!

2 Good Gymers made their way 50 yards from their previous task to care for the Tiny Forest. Wonderful to see fat juicy buds appearing on the Tiny wee saplings. The mice have made a new home in the amazingly warm compost bin. Fantastic amount of worms & grubs doing their thing in the Tiny Forest compared to the earth elsewhere on the Hill. Great for biodiversity & the future health of the forest. Today's highlight was the addition of a never before seen brand new tool - the clawed werewolf glove. Fabulous bit of kit, has to be used to be believed! So why not come to the next session and see for yourself?

Today's tiny forest tasks included: spreading woodchip onto the circular path, weeding and removing grass, transporting compost from many mini heaps into the newly constructed compost heap, and emptying said compost heap to allow it to be finished off, before refilling. We also carried up another dozen bags of mulch for later use. A busy morning!

Rich and Michael enthusiastically volunteered for the compost heap, expecting to be let loose with hammers and nails, but had to be content with turning out compost and shredding cardboard for a while first. Once they'd been sufficiently Good, they were allowed to smash things with a sledgehammer and finish off construction.

Lucy, Claire (1) and Alistair were battling with the grass that was enjoying our forest's lovely compost, Claire (2) and I took on the mini heaps, and everyone else spread loads of woodchip, and carried more up. Babs also got to pose next to the first ever tree planted in the forest, just about 1 year ago.

Once we were all done, most of us headed to a new cafe, The Kitchen Osbaldwick for a very yummy lunch, before some headed straight on to task 3 of the day.