The Life O'Mattock with Stef Durkin

On what has been described as the wettest lunchbreak in history (Tooze, 2023), 6 GoodGymmers ran, powerwalked, and cycled to help maintain the outside spaces at Barstow House

The block of sheltered housing has a few garden spaces which needed a bit of TLC - on meeting the task requester, we decided to make a start on one of these gardens. Leaves were swept. Weeds were rooted out. And Stef (with the help of Katie and a trusty mattock) got rid of a tree root we thought looked like a mandrake.

In just over half an hour we had this garden in a much fitter state, and made some good headway on the second. This, and another of the outdoor spaces, could do with even more TLC in the followup task next week if you fancy signing up.

Within an hour, we had enjoyed ourselves making two of these spaces much nicer - we were chuffed to hear that there's a new person locally, who has been interested in doing some planting once this is all sorted!

Mission accomplished.