Some night time raspberry spotting

What a lovely day today and I have done a few little gardening jobs.

I cut the grass at home and I took some lavender cuttings from the bush in the front garden (hopefully some new plants for free). If they do manage to grow they will become part of my garden redesign. I fancy a low maintenance lavender and gravel border in the back garden near our new fence.

I went to the allotment at 7:30pm as the heat of the day had disappeared. I virtually had the whole site to myself. I chatted to another plot holder who had seen me struggling to get Huw to sleep at the patch recently, she said she felt for me. Worryingly she had given up her allotment when her children were little babies as it was too difficult to do. With Jane Perrone choosing to give up her plot for the short term perhaps I'm completely mad to think that I can manage my plot, family activity and work when I return soon.

Still the site is beautiful in a ramshackle way and is made more relaxing with the sunset and for now it is good to be there alone with my thoughts.

I managed to get a reasonable bit done. I was able to plant out my 'rescue' manage tout plants (sadly most likely to be slug fodder). I put in a courgette plant donated by my mother. I planted out 3 more sweet corn plants. Its funny that the first nine seeds all germinated I lost one plant to Owen treading on it and one to unknown causes, I decided to sow another nine and only three germinated I did nothing differently and all the seeds were from the same packet but I suppose that is the excitement of gardening. Finally I planted out 10 dwarf bean plants they may be a bit close to the potatoes but that was the only place for them to go. I also watered the red cabbage most of which look a little sad and dilapidated at the moment.

A strange thing about being at the patch so late is that the nocturnal activities of the mollusc wildlife is revealed, hundreds of them crawling out from their hiding places - yuk.

Just as I was about to go I spotted this a nearly ripe raspberry our first. Now the big question is, will I get to eat it or will a bird beat me to it?