Where's the rain?

Yet another day of sunshine. It must be weeks since the last rain.

No posts for a while due to holidays. Almost everything in the greenhouse survived the holiday cooking, except the Ricinus.

Down the allotment, we could do with some rain, but I really don't want to start watering all and sundry - seed germination may be delayed, but it's better than wasting water.

On the allotment:

• first flowers on the strawberries (note to self: need more strawberry plants)
• signs of life on most raspberry canes (put in last autumn)
• kohl rabi: first sowing has germinated
• radishes showing where I have sown parsnips have germinated, even if the parsnips haven't
• salad leaves have germinated
• the lettuce sown in November is nearing harvest
• the Nigella seeds that I harvested from the garden have germinated and are growing away well
• Three (yes, THREE) spears of asparagus have come up - all about as fat as a shoelace - I think they need feeding.
• Some carrot seeds have germinated
• sweet peas have survived being planted out and will pick up soon; ditto golden mangetout peas.
• purple flowered mangetout have germinated (well, half a row has)
• normal broad beans are flowering; red flowered broad beans are growing away quite well
• I've had to earth up the Lady Christl potatoes twice!

To do:

• more digging out of roots
• plant pink fir apple potatoes
• lots more sowing of seed - may wait until it rains a bit though

Talking of waiting for rain, I can pretty much guarantee rain tomorrow as we are off to Ness Gardens again, for SomeBeans to try out the new lens on his camera. It always rains when we visit Ness.

In the garden at home:

• planted a deciduous azalea under the cherry trees at the back of the garden, along with hellebore seedlings I bought last year.
• potted up some Strelitzia (Bird of Paradise) plants bought for Somebean's birthday
• started ruthlessly weeding out Spanish bluebell plants - plenty more still to come up.

Down the allotment tomorrow afternoon, probably in the rain as we are visiting Ness as well. Plots seem to be filling up rapidly - there was a pice in the local free paper recently saying that only 1 site in Chester had free plots - ours. It'll be nice if the bramble inested plots are brought back under control - apparently they've only been out of cultivation for 2-3 years. I'll try to plant some of the 75 gladioli bulbs I bought for £2.99 down there tomorrow. I hate cutting flowers from the garden, as I feel it 'spoils' the garden. So, the cunning plan is to have a load of flowers for cutting at the allotment, for a house full of flowers from the summer through to the end of autumn.

Pretty photos of Ness are bound to follow tomorrow :-)