Sunny Weekend

A bank holiday weekend of glorious sunshine (well, alright, it did rain on the Saturday) . . .

Made an early start on the hedges, as well as cutting the grass and other more general garden maintenance tasks - all of which generated a number of bags of garden waste.

Also found some time to enjoy the sunshine and relax though - met up with old friends for lunch, and walked the prom in the sunshine (taking in the views of the annual charity Raft Race).

On the bank holiday itself we were even moved to get the barbecue out - (as it appears was everyone else - had to make do with sausages, as we couldn't find a burger in the shops for love nor money!).


Just have to hope now that that wasn't it, and that the summer still has more sunshine to offer . . .

Planting Up

Time to get the greenhouses and vegetable garden planted up - at this stage the plants always look so small - beefsteak tomatoes in the big greenhouse - cherry tomatoes in the small (with the vine):

And courgettes in the large veg patch (the small veg patch already having been planted up with potatoes and onions):

At the moment the courgettes have all been surrounded with a slug pellet barrier, as the young courgette leaves have definite slug-appeal - hopefully, with time, they'll become less tasty.

Barring disaster there'll probably be marrow postings in due course!

Big Bug

Leaving for work this morning encountered a rather large (nearly 3cm long) beetle on the path outside the house:

Hadn't seen anything like it before so took a photo to identify it later.

Looks like a common cockchafer - also known as a May bug or Doodlebug - in large numbers they can apparently be a bit of a pest, but this is the only one we saw, and as the larvae take 3 - 4 years to mature, the garden is probably safe enough!

Lord of All He Surveys . . .

Martin is still working away a fair bit - but he does get to see some sights - even in work:

This fine fellow had positioned himself on top of one of the post vans - nobody was sure where he'd come from - there isn't a nearby body of water - maybe this looked like a good vantage point from which to find one . . .