First new potatoes this week! a small meal but encouraging after the drought to think something is in there!  The runner beans have started to run up the poles at last, and the peas are in flower.  Several good heavy showers this week have really helped everything grow, so my weeding hoe has to come out. It is the best tool, a tiny dutch hoe about three inches wide, which can get between the onion rows and doesn’t accidentally cut them in half!

At last I have managed to disperse most of my plants from the care home greenhouse and everything is beginning to move towards summer. Jane and I met on the allotment on Friday and cleared the herb beds in the middle of all the poppies. We have salads in abundance, and I took the tops off the runner beans and steamed them.  Spinach too is in good fettle.

The time of the opening of the gardens fast approaches, so I have to hack down all the weeds and nettles at the top and bottom of the plot. The red currents are hanging like scarlet jewels in the bamboo fruit cage, and I have mulched the strawberries witrh straw and pu t them under plastic cloches. It stops the birds but does nothing to prevent mice vandalism which has been a real problem all year.   But a good time to garden.

A great quote pinched from a US source.  “From the earth we come, to the earth we return, and in between we garden.”