We had our first properly dark task of the season tonight as we helped Millie and the Friends of Cator Park neaten up foliage ahead of the annual Paws in the Park competition on Sunday. Work lights set up, Millie taught us how to scallop the bramble edge so that more of the path was accessible but we still left enough greenery for the birds and insects.

It was Elna's first task and she got stuck in with the shears straight away. We were also joined mid-way through the task by Millie's schnauzers who did a great job of supervising.

Nice job all!

Inspired by shopping for a water butt, tonight's dilemma of the day was "What's your favourite vessel for drinking liquid?" It turns out everyone has a very specific mug, broken bottle or tankard, unless you're James for whom it's much more important that the liquid itself delivers after a tough week of work 🍷 Fair enough!

We split into two cohorts to get to our task - Cat led a longer run with Stephen as trusty backmarker, whilst Charlie and I took a stroll!

---

Bark in the Dark...

Our task was at Cator Park, filling up barrows and buckets with woodchip at one end and ferrying it over to the new Tiny Forest at the other end. Maybe we should actually install a boat to carry it along the stream?

In what was apparently the final mulch run of the year, we got a solid 10+ barrows-full from the pile to the tiny trees.

The wee saplings will be much better protected from competing weeds now that it's knee deep in woodchip!

Ace work team, and don't forget to bring head torches next week 💡

---

Tonight we had another lovely sunset run / walk to the Crystal Palace water tower where John split us into two groups: one excavating the delicate clay pipes running around the perimeter of the water tower base and the other clearing away the last of the foliage towards the back of the base. We made some interesting discoveries as we cleared, including a massive spider and a decades old crisp packet which sadly still hadn't disintegrated :(

As ever, the conversation was varied - from race day strategies for the Big Half in two weeks' time to favourite sweet condiments (Maltesers spread is now firmly on my list to try!)

A sudden and unexpected rain shower brought our session to an abrupt end, but not before we'd made good progress with our tasks. Have included a couple of before and after photos with this post - excellent work team!

I'm pretty sure it's the hottest day of the year or something, so some of us were definitely FLAGGING today.

We kicked off at the Bridge House with our top ways to cool down. Fans, iced coffee, cold showers - nice.

Then we split into a couple of groups with the blokes taking a stroll and the women doing a run to Cator Park.

Their new Tiny Forest was looking a wee bit weedy so our task was to get some fresh mulch from the piles over the other side of the park. Buckets, wheelbarrows and many shovels were used to get a good third of the new saplings surrounded.

Millie wasn't sure they were going to get the exciting new Green Flag raised without her husband, so most of us headed off, but fortunately Hannah filmed the flag raising.

Well done Friends of Cator Park and Alexandra Recreation Ground. And well done GoodGymers for playing a seriously key role in making this happen.