Productive session at What If? in Stockport this evening for Julie, Laura, Niamh, and Ben!

Braving the stormy weather 🌧 we split into 2 groups:

• Clearing the garden and pond maintenance 🌳
• Planter painting 🎨

Directed by Pauline and Aoife, we managed to put a first coat of green and pink water-based protective paint on the dry bits of the planters, managing not to cause too many splashes. Even with the small brush, Niamh expertly filled in all the nooks and crannies. Julie was in the garden, giving it a clear up after the hot spell of weather.

After Clearing up, we had a brew and some Moroccan chickpea salad 🥗 before heading home.

Another successful session back at What If? where Ben, Niamh and Laura helped to line and plant out new planters gifted to the café.

We filled the planters with herbs, veg, seeds and flowers, whilst learning about combination planting!

We finished off the evening with pasta salad and heard all about the exciting plans What If? have in the pipeline.

Welcome to Chris for his first GoodGym task and to Sarah from GoodGym Brighton who was in the area for work. Hope you enjoyed the task!

On Earth day we took to the water to remove debris and lots of plastic that had built up in and along the River Mersey, particularly following the floods over new year. We kitted out in buoyancy aids and collected a stash of litter pickers, oars, and bags to collect the rubbish 🚣‍♂️🚣‍

🛶 With two per canoe and then fastened in pairs, we slowly made our way upstream, collecting any rubbish as we went, particularly from tree branches were items had accumulated 🌳. In particular, there were lots of bits of plastic bags, bottles, cotton and material, plus polystyrene. At one particularly crowded tree, we collected lots of materials and freed much of the tree of rubbish, including a blue barrel that (eventually) was freed from the branches after some tactical sawing and cutting. We did our best to avoid the sewage outflow nearby too but couldn't avoid the wild garlic that lined the river bank!

Once the bags were full, we slowly drifted back downstream, bringing the canoes out of the water and onto racks (after a quick rinse in the Mersey) to be stored back at Venture Out 💪

Top effort from all involved. There will be more canoe (or kayak...) sessions planned for future dates so keep an eye out for that.