An hour on the plot this evening spent making the most of the rain last night. Earthed up the potatoes, planted marigolds and strimmed the edges before the strimmer ran out of juice. The ground is still desperately hard, I must be one of the few people hoping for a wet bank holiday!

Oh, and signs of *lots* of plums!

Its *so* dry out there. Apart from one sunday morning, it hasn’t rained properly since the potatoes went in early March. So things are really dry at the allotment and consequently things are growing v-e-r-y- s-l-o-w-l-y. Apart from the weeds, the weeds are still there

Still, there’s signs of broad beans, and peas (although these are diminishing by the day, victims of something pest like but I’m not sure what). The over wintered garlic and onion are likely to be small, but there are lots of them, and those potatoes are finally emerging into the light with what rations of carefully conserved water I’m prepared to give them.

But most glorious today (during a rare bit of drizzle which coincided with me having to cycle to Allotment Town) were the signs of what I think will turn into plums. The flowers have gone and left tiny seed-sized but plum shaped buds. We had, I think, four last year. None the year before. But having cut down two trees, liberally fed, manured, and pruned the trees, there’s signs of lots fruit there… now for enough rain and sun to make them grow!

With the help of volunteer slave labour, we now a strawberry bed with matching cage. Planted beetroot, carrots, dwarf beans and more sunflowers, and some pak choi. Fed the plum trees with sulphate of potash and worked blood fish and bone into the garlic.