Season of the Spider

Can hardly move in the garden at the moment without running into a spider's web and plenty are making themselves at home indoors, which is helpful, because there are plenty of aphids and fruit flies about, but unhelpful when they end up in the bath.

Sweet pickings

A good year for sweet peas, lasting throughout the summer and benefiting from repeated picking and watering.

Plum snatcher

This squirrel busily slurped on a plum a few feet away, discarding the skin and dripping juice until it either dropped it, or had had enough.

First cob

Inbetweener

           A marrow, a courgette and something in between.

First beet

Add water

A beautiful month, after a rainy start, with enough sunshine to allow things to bloom and ripen. Everything's needed watering, especially sweetcorn, beans, courgettes and some newly established raspberry bushes. Lots of early windfall apples and overripe plums about and with them, fruit flies and wasps.

Drawn swords

Heads up

Late risers flourish

Despite being slow to start these off, the sweetcorn's done well in the hot weather, bolstered by almost daily watering and with any luck, there'll be a couple of dozen cobs along in a few weeks. Probably best to take the precaution of fencing these off with netting to discourage the local badger population from taking a sweet snack.

Pomme de Terre

After a cold spring and periods of drought and humidity, it hasn't been a great year for potatoes, but a crop of Desiree have done ok.

Rudbeckia fulgida

        Rudbeckia and chamomile loving the hot dry spell this week.

Survivors

The entire tomato crop at the allotment succumbed to blight, the perfectly formed fruits turning from green to black. It might have been because the weather was wet and warm for a while, but it's more likely that there are spores in the soil from previous years. Fortunately, the crop grown at home in pots has done well.

Pair of sunnies

Conemelt

Echinacea, like Rudbeckia, are cone flowers. John Peel used to play a lot of Conemelt in the 90s.

Beeteasel