An almost perfect evening for a pleasant 3k social run and return visit to the communal gardens at Wild Green E13, where this week we were tasked with weeding the "mural bed" (aka disturbing yet again a lot of snails), and after being given a crash course in weed identification ("take out all the ones with the big rabbity ear style leaves"), and armed with an impressive collection of trowels, and a wheelbarrow to use as the collector of said ears and anything else that could be composted, Hilary, Graham, Brad and Nick got to work.

We had an audience, as the evening sunshine had brought out the crowds to enjoy the park and gardens, and we received quite a few compliments from the benches on the great work we were doing to keep the garden neat and tidy - our hosts were equally delighted with our efforts, and once we'd got the weeding done, it was time to water the vegetable patch in advance of the forecast hot spell later this week - Graham discovered the Edvard Munch "Scream" watering can was surprisingly accurate...After an equally pleasant run back, we decided Hilary's birthday of last week needed celebrating, and conveniently our run had finished right outside the pub...always great when a plan comes together.

We'll be back again to help out at the gardens on 4th August - more watering, weeding, composting and whatever other tasks that Fleur and her friendly colleagues need doing to keep this particular community garden in excellent condition.

Mr R was hopeful that the 3 for 2 on asparagus was still on this week - it was, which made today's visit all the more worthwhile - to be honest, there were quite a lot of packs on the shelf, so his luck might hold out for a while yet...

Perfect conditions this morning at the Fields, and clearly 50 enthusiatic junior runners thought so too, including two first timers who sped round the two lap course at top speed to claim the top two positions - congratulations to them and hopefully they'll be back again, along with our other first timers, all of whom were doing their first ever junior parkruns.

Someone who definitely wasn't attending her first junior parkrun was Sarah whom we welcomed back after a few weeks away, and who made her tree her home once again - in fact we had a great volunteer turnout with a mix of parkrunners, DoE and willing parents all keen to put on the high viz, and all of whom made today's event run smoothly and made Nick's life as today's Run Director so much easier!

More of the same next week under the big tree, where hopefully it'll be a repeat of today's blue skies and bright sunshine, and super speedy performances.