While at South Ealing Food Cupboard, Sevan wandered over to see the "one of your lot" who was busy in the church garden. It turned out it wasn't a GoodGymer at all, but Cliff, the gardener and task owner at St Mary's churchyard who was wearing a red Nike t-shirt. Since the last time GoodGym had visited, spring and a lack of volunteers had caused the weeds to shoot up to the height of the old graves or "monuments" as they were called, so he was trying to reign them back in.

Sevan was wearing totally inappropriate footwear to go gardening, but he said that he'd be back to give Cliff a hand once the Food Cupboard was set up. Sevan did return and grabbed a fork and gloves, spending 30 minutes pulling cleavers - a.k.a. sticky willy - which were everywhere and digging out nettles and blue alkanet. By midday, there was a small oasis of brown soil appearing in the sea of green weeds. Looking across the churchyard there was still a lot of green, so there is plenty more work to do to prepare the church garden for the arrival of a new vicar in August.

Sevan arrived at St Mary's Church and met the regular volunteers who were having a chat in the sun, waiting for the second delivery van to arrive.

"Looks like one of your lot is working in the garden. Red t-shirt with white writing on the front" - Graham

Sevan went to take a look at who the gardener was, which is a story for later...

Soon the familiar DHL van rolled up and everyone sprang into action, ferrying crates and boxes of food to the church building. There were a few cardboard casualties en-route, but all of the food made it to be sorted through and put on display. Sevan was joined by Iram at her first task, with them both helping the regulars in identifying and stacking salad leaves and herbs. Iram tried hard to make the biggest stable pile of cos lettuce packs and to separate flat leaf parsley from coriander. Well, new GoodGymers need to earn their stripes. Welcome Iram 🎉👏🥳! Great work and we look forward to seeing you at another task soon.

Today's delivery had few ready meals and was relatively meat free, with cocktail sausages and 2 giant pizzas being the main items for carnivores in the fridges. The pizzas were so big that they and their packaging ended up being cut into smaller pieces with a bread knife to be shared between the clients 🔪. Other than the pizza, the most unusual item today was a box of tiny, super concentrated limes that most of the volunteers had decided to test out in the line of duty to their clients 🤢.

After a community session at GPRA community Hall, Kash, Sevan and Steph Ducat jogged towards their afternoon mission at Mrs N, but stopped for lunch. It was not lunch but a feast : loads of food for a good price - we left the table with some takeaway as it was so massive. The 3 full belly goodgymers needed to burn their huge lunch off!!!We arrived at Mrs N who replied to the ring bell but the 3 were surprised by Mr N from the side who led them to the massive garden where weed were just uninvited guests. Mr N was not only working his day job, but also has been looking after his wife who has had an operation about 2 months ago. Their garden had decided to party and go wild : grass, brambles and weed had taken the garden to the next level! Mr N was already busy in the garden and had several tools available for the Plantastic Voyage that him and the 3 goodgymers were going to experience for 90 minutes. Garden State of Mind was to eliminate the weed, brambles and the grass. Sevan took loppers and secateurs, while Kash took the strimmer which keep wanting attention(strings attached?), Mr N the lawnmower and of Steph took his preferred weapon the scythe. We moved in formation : the scythe first, followed by the strimmer, then the lawnmower and the finishers were the loppers/secateurs. The plantastic Beasts walked all over the uninvited guests - 2 massive bags of greenery were filled. Mr N provided nice ice cold water bottles to all including himself as worked as hard as the goodgymers. We were also told and noticed that the Foxes were coming to party too in the back garden : they will probably be shocked by the changes that happened today in the Garden of Eden-tity, Green Thumbs Up to all four and we are sure Mrs N will be very happy to see her garden

It was our fifth session for Greenford Park Residents Association Community Hall and the fourth one that included transporting bikes. Will those bicycles eventually go away?

We started the journey of transforming the hall's backyard in December last year. Back then, we could not even take a good "before" photo of the space as dozens of bicycles blocked us from entering the area.

It was incredible to see the final step of clearing the bike graveyard today and completing the painting (at least the first coat!) of the second wooden bench that had been buried under the heaps of bikes.

The bicycles belonged to London Bike Hub, a great initiative aiming to restore as many bicycles as possible for the community. They used to store the pre-loved rides and bike parts at the back of GPRA Hall. Now was the time for the association to reclaim the space and start using it for tea parties and outdoor events. Ash, Christos, Sevan, Steph and Kash were there to make that happen. Under the watchful eye of task owner John, they followed his vision of a bike-free space with two renovated orange benches ready to welcome visitors.

After 90 minutes of dismantling two large bike racks, using creative ways to get the wheeled and wheel-less cycles up the hill to their new home, sweeping paving slabs and painting a bench with old, orange-tinted wood protector, the promised land of tea parties has emerged. It was astonishing to see such a clear, spacious yard, especially in comparison to what we had first encountered in December!

We cannot wait to hear from John again about the community activities planned in the garden... or another job to fix the paving slabs - we are not too fussy!

Sevan and Kash expected delays (but maybe not severe delays!) on their second task of the day: a cabinet building. But time flies when you are having fun - or assembling flatpack furniture! They called Ms E, their last beneficiary, to admit they were running late. Fortunately, the lady was not going anywhere and was happy to wait for the GoodGymers. Phew!

Ms E needed some unwanted vegetation removed from the back of her garden: alkanet, Herb Robert, cleaver (a.k.a. sticky willy), some grass, and a few weeds that were taller than Sevan! The only things to keep were two apple trees and two lavender plants.

The pair made up for the slippage with the quality of their work. The weeds faced a true armageddon, being wiped out from the surface of the garden and from the back wall. Just look at the photo of that madman with a butcher's cleaver - the weeds had nowhere to hide from him! Sadly, some snails were lost due to the intensity of weed extermination, but that's the nature of life... and GoodGyming.

Ms E was impressed with the result and offered the duo water, soft drinks and sweet treats. She even wanted to reward Sevan and Kash with cash, but the GoodGymers explained they were volunteers and did gardening exclusively for fun.

You should do private jobs too! - Ms E said.

That's one more benefit of GoodGym: you may not notice it from the start, but you keep learning new skills on the job. How else would the author of this report know what alkanet, Herb Robert and cleaver are, if not from GoodGyming experience? Sevan and Kash will keep building their horticultural portfolio until they're fed up with their desk jobs, then take over the world of gardening one day.

Revisiting Ms S' casa after almost a year, there was a big difference. She decided to make more use of her garden and live an alfresco lifestyle, moving a lot of her furniture and belongings into the sun trap linked to her basement apartment.

Today, her giardino and apartment felt like the Amalfi coast, maybe helped by the Roman style column that Ms S was painting outside. Back inside there was marble flooring visible too.

"I can see the floor now [in the living room]" - Sevan

Being able to see the floor was a change to last time and also important for the mission as Ms S wanted Kash and Sevan to build a tall cabinet. Putting big things on the ground was essential to them building something for Ms S to put her tableware in for entertaining.

The cabinet had been ordered from Temu and this was the first time that Kash or Sevan were building flat pack furniture from there. Sevan had very low expectations for the quality of instructions or materials, but one of them turned out to be surprisingly good.

As the GoodGymers unpacked the 2 large boxes, Ms S offered refreshments. She remembered the tea (chocolate & vanilla rooibos) that the pair had enjoyed last year. Today was too hot though, so some water would be fine, even if it wasn't ice cold. Then, Ms S had an even better idea. She had a bottle of prosecco, nicely cooled in her fridge. Kash thought it wouldn't improve their furniture building abilities, plus they had a 6km run to their next mission on empty stomachs, so they stuck with water. Not to be deterred in getting Sevan into an Italian vibe, a Cornetto appeared, which he couldn't say no to 🍦.

The furniture building was slow and mostly uneventful. The instructions were actually very good, even if the build quality was only so-so. Mostly uneventful meant that there was an "event" and that happened when Kash and Sevan triumphantly pushed the completed top and bottom pieces together and started pinning the back panels in place. A gap appeared above one of the panels and they realised that the 2 main parts weren't actually screwed together 😯. After a quick rifle through the instructions, a fix was made and the cabinet was done... and properly assembled.

Ms S was extremely happy and explained to the pair what would be moved out of bags and boxes into the new storage space. Another step towards her turning her apartment into a liveable home.

Mrs H had a beautiful new patio. Her builders weren't gardeners though and had made a mess of her flower beds. They'd left big gaps between the new wall around the flower beds and the soil inside it and someone needed to fill them in. Mrs H's small palm tree had been knocked over too and was now being propped up or weighed down by some pieces of rubble. Not ideal and nor was the fact that Mrs H's favourite fork had vanished.

As well as the main tasks above, there was some general weeding and tidying to do, which Kash took on, plus removing a dead rosemary bush. Mrs H was also concerned about any trees growing in her garden and wanted to dig them out. Sevan thought that would be quite destructive as it would affect a lot of nearby plants, so instead the pair cut the trunks of any potential trees at ground level, stunting their growth for now. All the while, everyone kept their eyes peeled for the missing fork

With the ground work completed, it was time to fill in the missing soil and make the palm tree more stable. Mrs H's son had had 6 bags (or 360 litres) of compost delivered, so Kash and Sevan got to work, moving the bags and pouring the compost, finishing just in time for the end of the mission. The end result was, no gaps 🙌 and no fork 😢. Despite not finding the fork, it was a great way to start the day, leaving Kash and Sevan filling positive for the missions to come...