Here's the picture

The mighty shed being repainted. Timbercare Forget-me -not Blue.

Something old, something blue.

Shed's been painted. A father and daughter moment. Hopefully encouraging her to spend more time on the plot.
Will post a picture asap.

The sun has got his hat back from the cleaners, hip hip hip hooray!

It would seem the sun has not deserted us at all. No. It had just taken a short leave and now has returned, after the heavy rains, to help the little plants grow. All the little dandelions, docks,chick weeds,thistles and creeping grasses are doing very well. Apart from the resident jungle, the rest is coming back to life, albeit slowly. the runners don't know what's happening, they are drowning one day and dried out the next. Watering is helping but you find it tends to rain heavier on the days you watered them earlier.. The peppers, full of hope and anticipation, died. The slugs took advantage of the protection the plastic lean to gave from birds, along with the help from the pounding rain, and tucked into the exotic fare that used to be two sweet peppers and one chili.
The cabbages didn't fare much better, as a quick survey of the site tells me isn't an isolated case, the slugs and rain combining again to thwart the grower. The rain didn't come in cold though,bringing warmth with it and rapid growth to all the temperate weeds, the sweetcorn and the landcress. The moisture loving tender plants would have been abundant had the slimy ones left them alone. Tender by name and tender by taste one assumes.
The tomatoes really are bad this year, the damp and the hardness of the rain causing a rot from the stem up. The rain splashing back up, driving soil particles with it, brought a lot of brown rot and black stem disease. Once again, temperature, the usual threat, wasn't to blame but the warmth and the wet giving perfect breeding conditions for fungi and bacterial spores.
With saturated soil and humidity giving all our enemies free reign, I think this year may be written large as one of the worst. Not just for the crops, but for the fact we couldn't get on the land to work it either.
The weeds were hard enough to keep down when they were tiny, now they are near shoulder height with stems as thick as your arm, they are liable to fight back!

After the rain

It stopped raining, it started shining and the weeds kept on doing what they do.
The aftermath was not as devastating as I had feared. There were no potatoes left in the ground on my plot so there was no problem there but the tomatoes I had planted out in good weather, and good faith, had been blackened and killed so I now have three remaining from twelve. Tellingly, it was the larger fruiting varieties that suffered the most.
The land cress which loves a good soak was doing OK and is still, OK, not rampant or amazing , but OK. If I say compact, that would be about the size of it!
The beans have been very prolific, loving moisture as they do. Good long shapely straight runners with very little damage and few signs of disease or misshape. The beans I had saved from last year's pods are still performing better than the seeds I saved from the packet last year.Earlier to germinate, stronger growth and better growth now with higher yield too.
Strangely , the beetroot are fairly ordinary, not huge or tiny , just normal, if not slow.
I have had carrots this year, no fly problems and few twists or stumps but not huge roots. Good tasty finger carrots though.
{parsnips look to be a good crop later this year, a good rate of germination except for the seeds I saved from the previous owners crop. No germination at all but Parsnips are known for poor germination in anything but the very freshest seeds.
The lettuce, well, lettuce like water but then slugs like lettuce and water or at least a wet surface and no predators. The persistent rain meant that few airborne prey could pick of the dreaded slime monsters so the lettuce suffered the worst damage of all the crops. Of over thirty plants planted out, we have had three edible specimens. The rest make quite reasonable compost.
The marrow/pumpkins/courgette/butternut plants seem to have been all marrow or courgette with the exception of one which has different, more squash like leaves. Once it has produced a female flower I'll know for sure.
The grapes ripened despite the weather and were..well, sharp. Maybe good wine grapes but not table fodder.
The rest? I have recently been to the plot, two days ago in fact, and returned with three bags full One all onions, one all beans(runner and french) and one with a mix of beetroot, carrot and courgettes. The fact I was 'just popping in ' on the way back from dropping the bike in for a service didn't go down well at the homestead though...