HANGOT's first work evening of the year brought Ealing GoodGymers out on Monday, which was unusual, with a quick run along a sunny canal to reach the task. They took a short walk with the HANGOT volunteers to the closest orchard to their base, the Piggeries, so named because pigs used to be reared there.

There were lots of general maintenance tasks to get on with. Kash and Christos started by chopping the weeds growing around the trunks of the fruit trees, preparing them to be mulched in the coming weeks. Sevan meanwhile, as the tallest of the group, chose to lop the tall branches of the back hedge to let the sunlight in, with Kash and Christos soon joining him in trimming the face of the hedge.

Everywhere Kash went, birdsong followed. Unlike the flower planting task in Walpole Park at the weekend, it wasn't a robin following her around. She had squeaky shears, which did a surprisingly good impression of a song bird 🐦

The final jobs of the session involved brambles, which weren't as troublesome as you might think. The brambles running through the back hedge were to be left as they apparently produce very sweet blackberries in the summer. Everyone looked forward to sampling those. The darker side of brambles lay on the ground. The trio were asked to trim any cute baby brambles that they could find. They knew why... like Gremlins, they had to stop the cute leaves from turning into out of control monsters come the summer.

The GoodGymers left the orchard and walked back along the canal as sunset neared, happy with a job well done. Our next session helping HANGOT will be at their Orchard Love day on the 11th of May.