Simon's Allotment

Some pleasant sunny weather at last this weekend, little birds flitting about, butterflies fluttering and bees buzzing. Saw the first bat of...

The purple sprouting is over now so we're into the perrenial white. Yum yum.

Seedlings coming along:

Green-veined white Peacock

My rowan tree was a feeble looking thing when I rescued it about ten years ago from someone's garden where it was struggling in the shad...

I had a heck of a job growing this. I collected the seed a few years ago from a garden I was working on, left them in a draw and forgot abou...

The rape looks quite pretty at this time of year even though it is lathered in chemicals and will be desicated before it's harvested. Yo...

In case you've been hiding a stone and hadn't noticed, April has turned out to cool and wet - twice the average rainfall and colder ...

How it's done, just in case you're new to all this. In the potting shed I get together the seedlings from the greenhouse to be pot...

First sightings this year of the orange tip and speckled wood: Male orange tip feeding on honesty in the garden Underwings of th...

Last Wednesday on the plot - the blossoming plum tree looking surprised to be surrounded by snow: The temperature was 2 degrees - com...

Darley and Nutwood nature reserve on a cool and cloudy day so no sign of any butterflies - although the birds were singing and I saw the odd...

Hopefully we've seen the last of the fraudulant summer, we can do without any more of that. The odd day of temperatures in the seventies...

The sudden high temperatures in March forced the spring cabbage to bolt and start going to seed: Luckily I've plenty of perennial b...

Sinfin Moor nature reserve - lots of signs of spring - trees greening up and plenty of butterflies - small tortoiseshells, peacocks and comm...

So I've finished the digging, sown a few seeds, planted out some new strawberries. It's nice to be getting cracking again.

Hard to believe there was snow on the ground just a month ago. Comma White Tortoiseshell