It was welcome sunshine that greeted us in Maryland this morning as we made a return visit to see Sue and her planters (of the "inanimate wooden" kind, not of "tea"...).

She had already forewarned us that today's task was painting (something we're always up for, especially when it's bright and sunny outside), and was clearly well prepared as her shopping trolley was overflowing with items that a modern day Michaelangelo would have been proud of.

After a quick round of weeding to tidy up some of the planters that we hadn't tended to during our last couple of visits, the paint trays, brushes, gloves and tins of white primer appeared, and once Graham had carefully done the pouring, Rosa, Hilary, Eugene and Nick positioned themselves along the wooden sides to get started, and as with all good painters, chatted contentedly as we worked. Helpfully Sue had marked with a cross (confusingly...) the blocks that she wanted painting - forfeits would apply to anyone who strayed outside of the lines.

As if by magic, we were soon joined by Kevin and Sharon, making a very welcome return to tasking, and it took Sue all of two seconds to put a paint brush in Kev's hand and tell him to start work...

After a good ninety minutes of careful brushing and much concentration, we soon had the three large planters primed with different sized white blocks (Piet Mondrian would've been proud of our efforts). Sue's intention is to then apply a range of different colours onto the primer which will then give the planters a more unconventional "artistic look"...a return visit surely beckons for us all to complete the masterpiece...

Tonight's task, our first visit to Wild Green E13, a volunteer led community garden in Plaistow, lived up to its name in so many ways. Our welcoming host Fleur was pleased to see us, and once she'd unlocked the container and distributed gloves and gardening tools, she pointed to a long edge of the garden, where some fruit bushes were lurking behind a lot of very green weeds and grass (and snails...), and asked us to get weeding...and so we did.

No prior skills required, and whenever we came up against some vegetation that we couldn't decide was friend or foe, Fleur got our her plant identification app to give us the go/no go signal (one was even identified as an opium poppy...which made us all wonder if there was some extra curricular horticulture going on in the garden...)

With four of us (Hilary, Graham, Bea, Nick), and Fleur on management oversight (and litter picking) duties, we had a great and very sociable evening in the fading light removing the unwanted green stuff, disturbing the habitat of far too many snails, but eventually leaving this area of garden looking much neater, and with easier access to the fruit bushes. Good work all around. We've agreed on a return visit on 16th June for more wild and green fun.