Mid-August Tuesday night group run to Acton’s Wildflower Trail was a sequel to a similar session in July. Another heatwave prompted Romina from horticultural charity Cultivate London to deploy the GoodGymers for another treasure hunt involving finding hand tools and watering cans - with a twist! This time, the task was extended to sowing wildflower seeds. What would the seed mix look like? How would the GoodGymers sow them?

Kash cheated the system by walking straight to South Acton early and unintentionally catching Romina before she left the Cultivate HQ. Kash received instructions directly from Romina and even remembered some of the plants from the seed mix: hollyhock, calendula, poppy, and sweet pea.

Steph and Sevan ran from Ealing Broadway to meet Kash and Gaby at the cutest little shed ever: the Cultivate self-service station at the Wildflower Trail. Kash had already filled two watering cans at the tank and was working on the last one - rightly so, as everyone found out that filling the can takes time.

Gaby, Steph, and Sevan set off to water twelve trees - some more obvious than others - in six wildflower beds. Waiting for the water to fill the cans offered an opportunity for lively water cooler conversations, but also for a call to action: the GoodGymers don’t like standing still with nothing to do, so they decided to take turns at spot litter picking while waiting. Kash, in the meantime, started weeding the bed with wild hedging.

The team used up all the water (and most of the task time) to come to the rescue of the thirsty trees. Before leaving the last five minutes for a weeding blitz, each GoodGymer had a go at sowing the seeds of love (according to Steph and Tears for Fears) or at the Wildflower Trail Mix (according to Sevan), with a crunchy insect insert. With sowing completed, the GoodGymers finished filling three Greener Ealing bags with weeds and carried them to the Cultivate HQ. Another rescue mission at Wildflower Trail completed!

Next week we are supporting the William Hobbayne charity with the maintenance of their outdoor space - sign up now!. In two weeks, we are back in Acton to work with Cultivate London collect leaves from the local school grounds.

It's been less than 4 weeks since Kash's solo visit to Mr M for back garden maintenance. This time she was expecting to tackle the side passage and the front garden, together with Sevan. Imagine her disappointment when she saw an explosion of lush bindweed and alkanet on the lawn she had weeded a few weeks ago! It looked worse than before her July mission for Mr M and felt like her attempts to pull or dig out the roots had been ineffective long-term.

Mr M's typical tactic when it comes to the lawn, was to simply mow it, and that's what Kash decided to do this time. She also pulled out some bindweed, especially the vines creeping on the paving, which could have been a trip hazard for Mr M, who had become increasingly unstable on his legs.

Sevan, never scared of painstakingly detailed work, disappeared behind the corner to pull out weeds alongside the path between front and back gardens. Kash joined him part-way, and together they reached the gate leading to the other side.

The front garden was easy and satisfying to tidy up, but offered quite a different experience. The backyard was filled with birdsong (quite unexpected in the centre of Shepherd's Bush), neighbour's dramatic music with intense flute parts, and the sounds of the tube trains announcing that the next station was Wood Lane. In the front garden, in contrast to that magical place behind the house, you could hear conversations of passers-by, tick-tocking of abused Lime bikes, and infernal screeches of a hoe against the paving slabs. The sounds alone could inspire a modern Hieronymus Bosch to come up with another interpretation of the Garden of Eden and the Last Judgement!

While Sevan returned to the purgatory of meticulous weeding - the side path between the heavenly and hellish gardens - Kash, who stayed in the Last Judgement garden, has been indeed judged. "Good Work!", Mr M's neighbour said. Mr M himself was also delighted with the result. Two GoodGymers were absolved from their sins against bindweed (cutting it instead of pulling) and free to go home to enjoy the rest of their Sunday.

Judging from the map, Sevan and Kash expected that their Sunday morning mission to help Mr P would be within an earshot from a prison. They were wondering what kind of gardening support Mr P needed. Would they be asked to dig a tunnel to rescue his brother who had been unfairly jailed? Would they be throwing contraband through the fence?

It turned out Mr P needed to mow the grass in his back garden and didn't even own any digging tools. He had gone full electric with his two hedge trimmers, two strimmers and one new lawn mower. Sevan opted for the battery-powered mower, that, luckily, had been charged. Kash chose the strimmer that worked - a powerful beast with a wire - and adjusted the cutting line before kicking off the engine.

The task took less than 40 minutes, including unpacking and choosing the tools, collecting old cuttings from the lawn, and sweeping the grass off paved area. The GoodGymers didn't have to do anything illegal related to the prison. Oh, and there was no rake.

School holidays had hit Acton Junior parkrun attendance today as volunteer and runner numbers were down. The children were either on holiday or still in bed. An emergency call to action had gone out for volunteers and the rota had filled with West 4 Harriers and GoodGymers (sometimes both), including Maria who came to her first GoodGym task and used her past experience of working with children to make a positive impact on the runners. Welcome Maria! 🥳👏

With the barebones set of volunteers, all the essential roles were covered. Michelle, Kash and Joanna were marshalling, with Maria and Sevan on finish tokens and barcode scanning respectively. Jon came in disguise, funnel managing in his West 4 Harriers kit and Steph had the sometimes entertaining, sometimes agonising task of tailwalking.

Of the 40 finishers today, as is often the case, the last one needed some motivation to get to cross the line. Their "motivator" parent tried different techniques until their last resort, to say no sweets and that they would fart in the refusenik child's bed🤢. That last threat scared the little girl and she broke into a run all the way to the finish with Steph close behind.

It’s been 9 years since the 9th August 2016, when 21 GoodGymers set out from Ealing Broadway for Boston Manor Park for the very first GoodGym Ealing session: a park maintenance task combined with light fitness. I wasn’t there. And I never met any of those original Ealing GoodGymers, apart from two guests: Ivo, the founder, and Ed from GoodGym Central. If you look at our website, you cannot even tell anymore who led that session. But does it matter?

Since 2016, 918 GoodGymers in Ealing - that includes guests like John who visited us today - have done over 10200 good deeds! That’s quite a number, isn’t it? Many of those GoodGymers already moved on, left the borough, found other communities, or started families, but all of them contributed to making GoodGym Ealing a little bit better by at least one good deed!

And today, here we were, at Sandy Park in Hanwell, celebrating the 9 fantastic years of connecting with each other to help our community and isolated, older people within it. Some of the people celebrating today were new faces who joined this year. No matter how the group evolves, we are still the community connected by the same idea: doing good while getting fit. At the same time, for every one of us, GoodGym means something slightly different - and that’s ok - because we are all different. GoodGym is not a space where people should feel the need to fit in. GoodGym is here for us and should fit our lives and who we really are.

At last year's birthday party, I asked everyone to share what they think makes GoodGym Ealing great. The overwhelming majority said the people, the company, socialising. That’s why this year’s birthday was simple: a picnic in the park. We enjoyed the sun, the birthday cake baked by Nishy, the banana bread from Iram, who used the surplus fruit from Monday’s Food Cupboard task, the homemade pizza and cakes brought by Lena and Marta, the vegan sushi from John, pizzas and other snacks shared by Ash, Sevan, Steph Ducat, and Gaby. We enjoyed the relaxed afternoon, connecting with each other, and, most importantly, enjoyed being ourselves.

Happy birthday, GoodGym Ealing!

It was nice to have a later start than usual for a Saturday morning task and everyone was keen to earn their crust (and cake and strawberries) ahead of GoodGym Ealing's 9th birthday party in the afternoon. A wonderful 7 GoodGymers came to help Hanwell & Norwood Green Orchard Trail to water and trim one of the closest orchards to their base, The Piggeries.

Steph, Nishy and Gaby took charge of the giant bowser of water, feeding each of the trees in the orchard to keep them healthy and growing fruit through to the end of summer. The bowser was refilled over and over from the canal and in total, 300 litres of water found its way into the ground. With that done, they moved on to fruit removal instead of growing, clearing blackberry bearing brambles from the back fence.

On the edge of the orchard, Kash, Iram, Ash and Sevan were asked to cut back the large hedges bordering the canal towpath, with the warning that there may be some thick and spiky hawthorn branches lurking within. Ash and Iram grabbed shears, working quickly along the sides and top, inside and out, along with HANGOT's own members. Iram enjoyed testing her shear skills on someone else's hedge before trying to trim the one in her back garden. Sevan and Kash were lopping their way along at a slower pace, cutting one thick branch at a time and debating what height the hedge should be. As well as spiky branches, there were a surprising number of adrenaline loving snails who'd climbed high into the bushes and had their homes chopped away as part of the clean up.

Clive from HANGOT was amazed at what had been achieved with 13 volunteers over 90 minutes. The orchard was transformed, meaning that everyone could go and reward themselves for their hard work at the party in the park!

Let it be recorded for posterity - there are three foods Mr G hates:

1. Cherries
   
2. Kale
   
3. Aubergines
   

So, cherry flavour is not in favour. In the absence of Mr G's new favourite blueberry yoghurts, I bought him strawberry and passion fruit ones.

Mr G was grateful for the help with his groceries and for our usual good chat. He was glad to see me again after a break.