Probably the best organised skip filling ever! Since the project was completed a couple of years ago, RUSS have accumulated a lot of rubbish that they needed to get rid via a skip. They also needed people who skip and do heavy lifting, there was only one team who could help - GoodGym Lewisham!

First, in went a large quantity of unusable wood. Then, what seemed like, several thousand plastic plant pots were put into columns. Some people - Oli and Steve, excelled at this, some people have poor at spatial relationships and were less good - yes that’s you Paul. The flower pots were placed at the bottom and then the skip and a couple of dozen bags of builders’ rubble more or less filled it.

Meanwhile, Lindsay and Julian bagged up copious quantities of well rotted compost.

Tea and biscuits wrapped things up at the end of an excellent evening.

RUSS is a volunteer-led Community Land Trust dedicated to providing homes that remain affordable in perpetuity. There is more about them here. https://www.theruss.org

On Monday we headed to St Mary's Church to help with various tasks, we were due to be inside the church but the bell ringers and brass band were practicing which meant we were outside tackling the mountain of woodchip whilst being serenaded by the bell ringers.

As well as shifting the woodchip, part of the group also tackling the watering of the plants and filling up the pond with rain water.

The woodchip pile was looking a bit lower than when we started and the graves had a generous amount of woochip around them. It was good to see the plants that we planted on our last visit have survived the lack of rain and looked like they were thriving!

We were then spoilt by St Mary's who always provide us with cups of tea and cakes and then it was time for the brass band to serenade us!

Next week is another shorter run to RUSS!

It was a small, but mighty group that left Glass Mill taking the scenic route through Brookmill Park (there were once lots of mills along the Ravensbourne) to The Albany, meeting Joseph at the door. We were given a brief tour - seeing the stage where a former Area Activator had once performed.

Its Open House weekend fairly soon and we were given video instructions as to what was needed - moving one side of a pile of wood chip to paths in the garden area. It was the first task of the season that needed head torches to see help with the raking on the path.

Tonight's task was a welcome return to Florence Green to help at this lovely restored open space, We were met by Subo and a random passing volunteer and got down to work raking up leaves and grass and picking up sticks. What we lacked in tools we more than made up for in enthusiasm and soon the respective stick and leaf piles had grown to impressive heights. After a hour the place was looking significantly tidier and it was time to run off into the sunset.