It’s just a continuation of last week’s clearing the garden. Today, we did mostly pruning of Lime trees. They now look better without the overgrown parts sprouting from the trunk and roots. Thank you Annie for taking the photos.

A fired up team from GoodGym joined Clean Up Charlton members for an hour on the circuit around the retail park in SE7. Half the group tackled the usual debris in Anchor & Hope Lane and Bugsby's Way, and the rest Woolwich Road and a 'grot-spot' at the car-charging station. Now, as well as clean energy, we have a clean pavement there. Then it was a brief call to 'Frankie & Benny's Alley' which we will have to rechristen 'Popeye Lane' now - doesn't mean it has any less litter!

Thanks for a great effort to everyone who attended - you light up our life!

A beautiful day saw 7 of us help out a the lovely family fun day at Roots4Life today. Justine, Johnny, Sarah, Ashton and myself helped in the first shift, Justine and Ashton manning the smoothy bike (a great hit with kids and grown ups alike!), Johnny and Sarah on the bouncy castle, me on the raffle stall and as if it was all perfectly planned, Khai and Sarah arrived to take over after their respective tasks of building a train set and litter picking in the morning! You've gotta give extra kudos to the double deeders any day!

Great to see you all and thank you for helping the event go smoothly! The session next week at Roots has been cancelled but we'll be back to help with their growing day on the 7th June!

Until next time 🥰

Arthur's nursery had a garden day where staff and parents and their little helpers joined forces to paint fences and do a general tidy up. The place is transformed after just a few hours work!

Eight of us congregated at Charlton House this Wednesday for a new task at Brooklands Primary School!

After sharing tales of a tasty meal that we'd recently cooked (and distressing those who had yet to have their dinner) we set off for our 4km run as reliably informed by Cat's first Strava session, whoop whoop! She's properly getting ready for the big half, innit? We enjoyed a windy road through Morden College (sorry Tom, Darryl informed me it's Alms Houses, not a private school so that saves you a bit of research) and arrived a little out of breath to meet Khai at the school.

Here we had lots to do moving woodchip and soil across the playground into the new planters. And boy we had a good old gawk at the lovely facilities these kids get - there was a little jealousy in the group remembering some of our primary school "playgrounds" in comparison to this amazing space!

We got to work shoveling woodchip into kiddies wheelbarrows and giant wheelbarrows and anything we could find to move it all to the new planters and once that pile was depleted we got to work on the soil, managing about 15 barrowfells and filling one planter. That's a bigger piece of work and no doubt we will return to it another session. 40 minutes of back breaking work later, we called it, and it was time to run back over the heath with an inspired tour from Darryl on some beautiful local gardens that quite a few of us didn't know about. And then came the even more beautiful sight of the Green Goddess at the standard to which we staggered in for one or two pints and what happened in the Green Goddess stays in the Green Goddess. Suffice to say, therin, a shattered ego is all that remains of the tragic tale of Tom's brown suit.

Next week we have a river run and litter pick . Until next time!

I cycled to the task and met Owen there. Though it was only two of us, we did what we could. Owen gave instructions on what we can do realistically for approximately 2 hours task.

This is how the task went. We started emptying and spreading a big bag full of woodchip, removed some old cardboad, pulling out weeds by hand including some roots too which was satisfying. After loosening the soil, later on, we seemed to have attracted 2 robins, as they found some food there like worms and insects. I love to be of help even in my small way.

Please note that this is an ongoing project and they continue to need volunteers every Tuesday from 1-3pm. Owen thanked me for my time, I love gardening so I will definitely come back.

After the task, I have been invited to have some cup of tea and biscuits which I accepted the offer, and said, why not? ☺️