18 GoodGym'ers shaked, appled and rolled as they apple-y got stuck into a heap of jobs at the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden

GoodGym H&F...the best way to conquer jet lag and post-holiday blues! Big thank you to Catriona for leading these past couple of weeks 😊. Despite the darker and colder evenings drawing in, tonight we were treated to a dry (rare as late!) evening for our run up to lend a hand at the Josiah Braithwaite Community Garden. With everyone ready and donning their GG tees we headed outside for our news round-up and warm-up...

A round of apple-lause for...

We started off the evening by first congratulating our very own ‘Speedy Jonzales’ Jonny Knight on his 50th good deed! 5️⃣0️⃣🙌🏼. A nice new black GG tee for you to speed around in will be coming your way!

The weekend saw lots of racing, very wet racing!...a big well done to Eloise, Matt and Steph who ran the Oxford Half, and to Tom and Jonny who ran the Cabbage Patch 10. Congratulations to Eloise on the PB!! 🙌🏼🥳

In other news...

1. Unofficial GG10 party 🔟🎉 - Friday 8th November at Topolski Bar on the Southbank. All the details are here.
2. 1. H&F Community Mission - Saturday 9th November at Wormholt Park. Please sign up here if you can lend a hand anytime between 11am-3pm.

Warming up to the core

Before we headed off on our run we began we some heel flicks, jumping jacks, and both mine and Johnny Wren's favourite, spotty dogs! With everyone nicely warmed up we headed off through the busy streets of Hammersmith up towards Shepherd’s Bush, pausing briefly for the beloved weekly wall sit en route.

Juiced in time!

We weaved our way around all the pedestrians and it wasn't long before we reached our destination for the evening, the Nubian Life Centre; and in perfect synchronisation, both Susannah and ourselves arrived within seconds of each other. The team gave Susannah a hand with all the equipment from her car as we all headed inside to the Josiah Briathwaite Community Garden.

The (apple) pressing jobs

The Josiah Briathwaite Community Garden is part of the Nubian Life Centre, which provides adult day care services for the Afro-Caribbean community with health issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer's. Susannah explained that the garden was full of colour so as to provide a high sensory element for those with dementia; the garden is also used by the elders at the Centre to grow food and provide a space for children to explore and find all the bugs!

Tonight we had a nice long list of tasks to be done that Susannah ran through with the group:

• Weeding of the patio and paths, using the favourite ‘deadly pointy weeding tool’ 🌱
• Sweeping of the patio and paths 🧹
• Tree pruning ✂️
• Raking leaves from the grass 🍂
• Wooden edging and stone rearrangement 📏
• Fixing up of the trellis 🔨
• Picking of apples 🍎

An 'in ciders' viewpoint

Jonny took on the ‘gram duties for the evening, capturing the team’s hard work and asking everyone ‘what does GoodGym mean to them'? - if you haven’t already, be quick to check out the stories on @goodgym_hf! Answers to the latter included friendship and community, and of course, biscuits! (no prizes for guessing whose answer this was!!). While Mo was on hand to take the 'smouldering' snaps for this week's vogue magazine...well the run report and the 'gram 📷.

Trellis again, how many GoodGym'ers are needed for the job?

In the age old question of 'how many GoodGym'ers does it take to put a trellis?' we confirmed tonight that it is in fact 5! Mo applied the final rotations of the screw to the trellis to ensure it could stand unaided and later tested out his handy work in a photoshoot of his own - you've got to know the face behind the camera after all!

Swept away by the appeel of ‘the deadly pointy weeding tool’!

With the 'deadly pointy weeding tool' in hand, Will ensured he weeded between the lines to eradicate the unwanted and unsightly weeds so they could be swept up easily.

Broom raiders, a cut above the rest!

Tom, Eloise, Matt, Johnny and Sarah armed themselves with brooms to sweep away all the up-ended weeds and leaves from both the patio and paths into neat piles so that Lucy, Arba and Naveed could ensure a clean sweep of them all with their trusty and effective dust pans and brushes.

As the others swept, Maddy eyed some bunting that needed to go, using a plastic chair to gain some leverage, and with no scissors in sight, secateurs provided her with the cutting ability needed to remove the tackled bunting!

Heart raker!

Bex and Alice got stuck into the raking of the grass, providing some top quality punning which raked my day as they got stuck into what they described as 'the great rake up!'...

With weeds and leaves being raked and swept up at an incredible pace, the garden was beginning to look nicely spruced up, you wouldn't have believed it was Autumn!

Rocking out

As Andrew finely pruned an overgrown tree, Steph and Sarah began 'rocking out' on the flower bed edging, working until the bitter last few seconds to ensure it was fully completed.

Core blimey!

With the time coming to call it a night, everyone finished up with their jobs and gathered in the tools. Susannah kindly offered everyone a reward for the fruits of their labour, apples fresh off the tree! With the lighting perfectly set, the team posed for a group photo, or two (well ten!) with their apples before getting stuck into them.

After some quick calculations, Susannah worked out that we'd saved her 9 hours of work tonight, and as there isn't the staff to do that much work she was incredibly appreciative of the teams hard work and efforts to get the entire list of jobs completed.

And they all lived apple-y ever after....with biscuits! 🍪

Once everyone had cruched their way through their apples we began our run back to base, and to the highlight of the evening, Lucy's scrabble biscuits, delicious and iced to perfection!

The perfect way to end a fun and successful evening. Amazing work as always! Arigatō chīmu! ❤️ Thank you for the lovely welcome back.

Next week we’re heading to Eloise’s workplace, John Betts Primary School to lend a hand with some painting and organising of their cupboards. Please sign up here. Have a great rest of your week and weekend!