Did you know that Pitzhanger Manor in Walpole Park, along with the surrounding area, will soon be the filming location of the Antiques Roadshow? Because of that, the rangers and volunteers are carrying planting activities, turning the ordinary grass patches into elegant flowerbeds.

A small but effective team of GoodGymers had a go on the planting task one Saturday in April. Tonight, GoodGym was returning with some experience and twice as many people to try to finish off the planting. Was the work easier this time?

There are no great GoodGym adventures without challenges!

⏱️ We were tight on time! It was a group run, so we needed to adjust the timings to account for that (well done Ijo on keeping a steady pace! 🙌)!

🍕 We had a booking for a monthly pizza social! That meant time was even more precious! The planting team - including the newest addition to the team, Georgina, worked extra hard to complete the whole geranium patch - and we did it! We only managed to wrap up on time because we had Milly leading the group to the venue, and Steph staying to help with putting away the tools.

⛔ The code to the lockbox didn't work! Luckily, the ranger was on duty 🫡 and saved the day, answering the call. Otherwise, we might have gone straight home (or for the pizza 😋)!

🖍️ There were no markings on the ground this time! Luckily, Annabel kept her eyes wide open and figured out the exact planting location from the photos we had! Sevan's knowledge of the location from the previous task allowed us to start digging right away.

🌱 The soil was not prepared this time! We had to deal with removing a large patch of grass first. It was a blessing to have Claire on the team, with her gardening expertise and the brilliant idea to use forks, not just shovels, to quickly prepare the ground.

🧱 There were bricks in the soil! In some areas we used brute force, in others we worked around the bricks. The plants may not ended up evenly distributed, yet they made their way to the soil!

🍂 We had to do some mulching too! With a bigger team, not everyone could do the planting. Taskforce Mike, Milly and Steph knew the drill and volunteered right away to wheelbarrow the woodchip and distribute it gently between the existing plants.

Thank you, Amazing Team, for the incredible effort in such a short time! 🤩 You totally deserved the pizza prize after the task!

Next week we are finally back to St Andrew's Church to help create gravel paths in their Pocket Allotment. Sign up now!

The City Harvest van was nearly empty when Sevan and Kash showed up at the Salvation Army Hall a couple of minutes after 4 pm. Emma with the early ESK birds unloaded most of the crates, so the next job was to assemble 75 snack bags and 44 shopping bags for the vulnerable clients.

"Sevan, let's run a quality check on those bananas before we put them in a bag." - Matt, an ESK regular.

A significant part of the rescued bananas went squidgy and couldn't be given out to the clients, so the last few snack bags were short of the fruit portion.

The GoodGymers took out the donated clothes from the Cupboard of Doom™, secretly pleased about not being the ones who would later have to cram them back into the closet.

Unpacking men's deodorants to give out, and counting the takeaway boxes were the extra chores that the Boss Lady Emma could think about before it became apparent that there was nothing more to do around 5:30 pm. Sevan picked up the temporary DJ job and put some Red Hot Chili Peppers on the speakers, and all the volunteers enjoyed a relaxing break, even though chilli peppers wouldn't make up for the few missing bananas.

When Steph arrived ahead of time for the 2nd shift for his crowd control gig, Sevan and Kash disappeared, and the rock music at ESK went silent.

Kash and Sevan arrived at Mr J's unexpectedly wet after the warmth and sun of the aptly named Sunday, yesterday. Mr J didn't mind that they were soaked, nor that their shoes were wet. He invited them in and explained that he needed to have his bed dismantled and moved across to the box room to make space for a hospital bed.

Mr J told the duo that the bed would need to be stripped of pillows and bed linen to be reused when the hospital bed arrived. Mr J remembered assembling the bed years ago and handed Kash an eye glass case full of various Allen keys to help with dismantling. With that, Kash and Sevan ventured upstairs to see what they would find.

There was a box room with a good amount of free space and the floor and a bedroom, with a double bed that had enough space to work around it. Great! The pair quickly stripped the bed until only the mattress and frame remained. Kash made space for the mattress in the box room and it easily slid along the corridor. Mr J had told them that there would be boxes of videos and records under the bed, so they were moved too.

Sevan then had a rummage to find the right Allen keys for the job and tried to think of the simplest way to relocate the bed frame. The construction of the metal frame was quite thin, so he thought that removing the feet - at the head, foot and 2 in the middle, between the slats - would be easiest, leaving the large middle section with the slats whole, to be slid into the box room like the mattress.

Ten Allen bolts were unscrewed and the 5 bed pieces were moved to the box room. All done in 25 minutes. Mr J doesn't know when his new bed will arrive, but with the old one out the way he's planning to spring clean the parts he couldn't reach with the bed in place.

On the Early May Bank Holiday, GoodGym Ealing had a different take on playing rock, paper, scissors.

The paper 📰, in the form of leaflets, was a weapon against something much more dangerous than rocks - waste 🗑️! The flyers to be distributed among residential houses around Ealing Broadway advertised a community project Ealing Sharing Space by the Circular Education Hub. At the same time, we dropped some leaflets for the Ealing Friends of the Earth.

In place of scissors, the greatest threat to the paper was water 💧. It seemed that we had picked the worst one-hour slot during the entire long weekend to do a leafletting task! Heavy rain was pouring out of the sky non-stop. The weather didn't scare off either the short-distance runners: Sevan and Kash, longer-distance runners: Steph Ducat and Anuj, or cyclists: Emmanuella and Alan.

A short briefing at the Ealing Broadway shopping centre explained that our aim for the morning was to promote free, weekly community events in Ealing Project cinema where residents can come together to share stories, skills (like sewing, upcycling, sustainable cooking), stuff (e.g. toys and books), and take practical steps against climate change.

We decided to target the houses between Ealing Broadway and Ealing Common. As we walked, discussions ensued about whether the streets we had picked were the good ones. The good ones usually mean streets with big houses converted to multiple flats or house sharing, but not necessarily expensive-looking family homes. We encountered a combination of residents' housing.

"This person drives the newest Porsche, I'm not going to drop leaflets there. They won't be interested in sustainable living."
"Was the car electric?"
"No."

"Maybe we are biased. Those who are better-off can be educated about sustainable living and interested in the activities we advertise."

The last street we hit was definitely a good one, with smaller houses and many letterboxes. That's when we ran out of leaflets that started getting damp. Those of us sporting weather-appropriate clothing held the flyers dearly under their jackets. The GoodGymers who had showed up today wearing t-shirts and sunglasses couldn't do much apart from still looking cool 😎 despite being soaked. With the distribution finished early, the drenched bunch marched back to the shopping centre to grab a coffee or hot chocolate ☕ to adjust their level of cosiness to an acceptable standard.

Mrs R is proud of her garden, which shows as it's very well maintained. She and her husband, Mr G, both have health conditions meaning that it's now hard for them to do much of the physical work needed. That's why they called for GoodGym help.

Kash and Sevan arrived to find a fairly large garden and imagined all of the big jobs that they may be asked to do. Mrs R's needs were more targeted though, she wanted 2 of her trees to be pruned and she asked the duo to "give them more air".

Kash and Sevan focused on a tree each, Kash a cherry laurel and Sevan a camellia that was in bloom. Kash took a liberal interpretation of the instructions and freely trimmed away at the sides, top and internal branches of the cherry laurel. The leaves and branches bounced off Kash on their way to the ground where they left a carpet of trimmings.

A few metres away, Sevan interpreted the instructions in a more limited the way, making the camellia less dense by thoughtfully removing some internal branches and giving it a hair cut on top. He decided that he didn't want to make the tree look too bald. As it was still in bloom, he had big pink petals raining down on his head as he tried to free the cut branches.

Mrs R was immensely grateful to Kash and Sevan and to all volunteers who took the time to help people like her. On reviewing their work, it turned out that Mrs R preferred Kash's more radical approach to pruning (note to self!). She and her husband insisted that the GoodGymers have a cup of tea before they left and as it was the last task of the day, Kash and Sevan happily accepted.

Team S&K are back in town for weekend missions to support older residents in their borough. Today's chapter takes them for a 7 km run to Southall, where their first task is weeding in Mrs C's back garden. Mrs C used to be a keen gardener and tended to her flowerbeds herself, but now she has become unwell and too weak to hold a glass of water for longer than a few seconds. Fortunately, GoodGym help is on the way! But what's that? A row of five wheelie bins blocks the path to the garden! The volunteers reshuffle them and eagerly enter Mrs C's backyard with a green waste bin - too eagerly as the bin needs to come back - it belongs to the neighbour! Too much excitement. 😅

Before the weeding commences, Mrs C has a side quest.

Can you break this?

Sure, they can. The breakable object in question is a piece of chipboard. Kash gives it two attempts with a powerful stomp, but the unity of the wood particles is too strong. Sevan tries a different technique - a slam jump! 💥 With three jumps he breaks the board into four pieces. Impressive. Three pieces are small enough to fit into a bin bag but the fourth one needs more work. Kash redeems herself by trying the jump method and ends up with three new smaller fragments of chipboard that can be bagged. So much excitement! 😃

The weed-ridden flowerbed awaits. Sevan makes use of his assets: the height to untangle withered creeping plants from the fence, and patience to remove the weeds growing around the flowers. He is also resourceful - in his hands, a mason's trowel transforms into a hand spade and scissors into a secateur! Kash is more straightforward and grabs the available well-rounded gardening instrument: a fork! With its help, she extracts an old bush root, digs out extensive patches of weeds and turns the soil in areas without any flowers to save. Seven pots get tipped over as there are no plants (except weeds) inside anymore. So much excitement! 😃

Time for the clean-up. The weeds have been bagged regularly, so Sevan and Kash don't end up with a big pile of garden waste to sort out. They have time to sweep the soil off the concrete path. But what's that? Clink! One of the glasses of water Mrs C offered is down, oh no! Too much excitement. 🥲

Mrs C is happy with the mission result, despite the collateral damage. She enquires about the process to get more GoodGym support. Sevan and Kash know there is a second flowerbed full of weeds on the other side. Maybe that one gets a GoodGym treatment in the upcoming weeks too?

Kash, Alan and Sevan discovered that they were all volunteering at Acton Junior parkrun this morning, while Joanna was the Run Director for the day. There were lots of first timers, apparently encouraged by the good weather, which meant that Joanna felt that things were chaotic before the start. There were lots of questions about Junior parkrun and how it all worked.

As Sevan walked up the hill from the start with his timekeeper's stopwatch running, one of the volunteers said:

"You're timekeeping? Good luck with that! There must be around 80 children today"

"This is the first sunny day this year. Every Sunday until now has been windy or rainy or cold" - Marshal

Thankfully today wasn't one of those grim Sundays. Today was glorious... sunny and warm ☀️

A little further up the hill, the lead runner who'd passed Alan's marshal post asked Sevan "Where do I go?". Sevan pointed down the hill towards the next marshal. They must've been one of those newbies.

At the finish too some of the children had to learn about funnel and that they had to run through it, not past it. "Run through here", "no, don't stop, keep going" and "over here!" were heard over and over. In all Kash and the other barcode scanners recorded 56 times, including a few who didn't have barcodes yet and needed some last minute registration action.

It was great to see that all of the children were excited and enthusiastic today, which doesn't always happen. They must be solar powered.