Great day shovelling compost for Surrey Quays farm

Five GoodGymers who volunteered at Acton junior parkrun in the morning, couldn't have enough fresh air on a sunny Sunday and decided on another session in South Ealing. After their usual post-parkrun coffee break, Michelle cycled 3.5 km to the next destination while Harvey, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash raced her on foot. The runners' route took them through South Ealing Cemetery, which had a surprising number of roundabouts! At one of the roundabouts, the team met Gaby and Simon - the latter on his official first session - although he had been familiar with GoodGym for a while! Everyone, including Beata, who walked to the task, eventually made it to the cemetery chapel and met Paul from the Ealing Parks Foundation.

Today's job was a continuation of last month's task to spread the Christmas joy over the cemetery. In other words, we were laying (very coarse) woodchip made of last year's Christmas trees over the cemetery's side paths. Our impressive team of eight split between three paths, and our smallest unit joined two local volunteers, David and Keith, with whom we exchanged experiences about interesting community projects in Ealing we had worked on. We joked about finding minced Christmas lights among the woodchip piles. In fact, one of us discovered a Christmas decoration piece resembling a diamond!

Speaking of precious goods, today wheelbarrows were worth a million as we had only two of them to share. One of our smaller teams used a tonne bag for woodchip transport instead - those GoodGymers had the best full-body workouts! Fantastic teamwork (despite Harvey's two right gloves) allowed us to complete all three paths before noon when we decided to call it a day. The retired Christmas trees could now rest in pieces at the necropolis.

The best reward for our volunteering efforts was spending the morning outdoors, in the sun, surrounded by the tranquil atmosphere of early spring. The blossoms on the trees made the South Ealing Cemetery resemble a magical park.

"Maybe that's weird, but I like cemeteries. I am not scared of them. They are so quiet and peaceful." - said Gaby.

Gaby was not the only one appreciating the unique serenity of graveyards. The Ealing Parks Foundation's project, which we supported today, aims for South Ealing Cemetery to retain its charm and dignity while transforming it into a welcoming green space for everyone to relax. If you are local to the area and are looking for a quiet space to go for a walk and clear your mind, visit the cemetery and be delighted by its calming atmosphere!

Last week's rainfall, followed by flooding of the Cuckoo Park planting site, forced us to postpone the Tiny Forest session until today. But what a glorious day it was! The sunshine finally arrived, and with it, a large crowd of GoodGymers! Half of today's team were new joiners, and for most of them, like Tia, tree planting was a new experience.

"It was a perfect first session!", said another first-timer, Rebekah.

Why wouldn't it be with the fantastic weather and a fun task, accompanied by samosas, pakora and fruit provided by Earthwatch? Well, for our new joiners, it was about something more.

"Very welcoming atmosphere. It was nice chatting to everyone." - Eliz.

For Eliz, it was the second session, and, although she was a new GoodGymer herself, she already recruited her dad, Mehmet. Mehmet didn't shy away from planting the rather spiky trees (he was particularly fond of hollies) or pulling and tipping the heavy bags with woodchip.

Both Michelle and Beata returned to a GoodGym session after a recovery break, and couldn't have come to a better place. Great to have you both back, and we are hoping to see you more often!

Planting trees was certainly not new to the GoodGym veteran Chris who cycled from GoodGym Richmond. Chris loves a good planting session and has covered many miles all over the capital to put more trees on the map of London! Among others, we planted oaks, birches, hazels, hawthorn, bird cherries, Guelder roses, whitebeams, purging buckthorn and hornbeam, so hopefully, Chris can add some new species to his tree portfolio!

As a part of today's midday planting, Hannah from Earthwatch asked us to do some quality checks of the trees planted by children from local schools in the morning. A few saplings indeed needed a little bit of correction, but generally, the kids had done a marvellous job! So did the GoodGymers and other volunteers. We secured all the whips by spreading mulch all over the Tiny Forest. The woodchip will keep the trees nourished and keep the weeds at bay.

Probably, the most unusual part of today's task was the fact that throughout the sessions we were painted by a local artist, Annabelle, who complimented our red t-shirts as being the perfect complementary colour to the green palette on her watercolour. The meaning of "are you ok with us taking pictures of you?" was just elevated to the next level!

Planting another Tiny Forest was a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon. After volunteering together a few of us ventured to GoodGym's favourite coffee shop in Hanwell for a cup of coffee and good chat.