For their last mission of the day, Sevan and Kash walked 10 minutes from their previous task in Isleworth. It doesn't sound too epic, does it? Let's start again.

Sevan and Kash, following the Ancient Greece-related theme of the Saturday morning community mission, visited Mrs H, who prepared for them the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Well, there were only two labours, but not the kind you do every week in your garden. The first one was trimming rose bushes to Mrs H's height, and the second: cutting down a small apple tree. The small tree was 4-5 metres high and had four trunks. Mrs H pointed at a large coniferous tree at the back to put questioning the size of the apple tree into perspective.

Sevan knew that Kash secretly fantasised about being a tree surgeon, so he grabbed a pair of secateurs and got stuck into pruning the rose bushes and invaders growing inside the hedge in Mrs H's back garden. Kash's plan of taking down the apple tree entangled lopping the smaller branches she could reach, and then sawing the thicker ones and eventually the trunks. Both Kash and Sevan anticipated that the job would be time-consuming, especially if they were expected to deal with the timber. And they were!

Mrs H confessed she had booked a 9 am slot in the Feltham recycling centre the next day. She was hoping to pack the small tree into her small car and drive to dispose of it on Sunday. She was very worried at the thought that she wouldn't be able to drop anything at the centre the following day and would lose all credibility with the council.

The GoodGymers had been on the task for nearly 90 minutes with good results. Kash had carefully taken down all the apple tree branches, even the 3-metre ones that could have damaged the neighbour's fence if not handled with caution. Sevan managed to chop down one of the four trunks. It was a moment of choice: spend time chopping down the remaining tree trunks so that the tree would become history or focus on packing the wood for transport to the recycling centre. It would have been awesome to be able to say "we chopped down a not-so-small tree in a single mission" - but not so awesome for Mrs H.

Sevan and Kash said no to being proud and focussed on what they saw as the most valuable: sawing and lopping already cut tree parts in preparation for Mrs H's trip to Feltham the following day. They filled a sturdy bag with the largest branches and shoved if into the car's trunk. The garden waste bin was full of smaller twigs too. After two hours on the task, the GoodGymers left behind only the small branches that Mrs H could collect in her own time, without compromising the visit to the recycling centre.

The last challenge was negotiation with Mrs H who had baked a cake on Friday and wanted to give it to the GoodGymers as a thank you. Such a lovely gesture! It would have been difficult to run 6 km back home with the whole cake, so the compromise was to take half of it between Sevan and Kash. The other half of the cake and the unfinished business with the apple tree trunks will have to wait for other GoodGym daredevils!