It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

We are having the finest summer for six years, though given that means about one week of sunshine that's more a reflection on the vileness of the weather in previous years. The spring though was, in Britain at least, the coldest for half a century.

Combine those two phenomena and it is making gardening a bit of a bugger, which for those of us who enjoy eating food we grow is beyond annoying. We are at least three weeks further back in the growing year than we would normally be, and now the ground is exceptionally dry so to prevent everything running to seed or dying off watering is needed.

In a spare moment the other day I calculated we had 44 different fruits and vegetables on our allotment (and you can add to that another two or three like fennel grown in the garden but not the plot). That isn't counting different varieties of the same thing either. So in spite of the conditions we can hope for some plenty to come, which is probably one definition of the allotment gardener.

Global Warming in the Allotment

This is not a cheer or even half one for global warming. Jeremy Clarkson is amusing but very dim as regards that topic: that it was cold yesterday doesn't disprove the lengthy scientific studies nearly all pointing us up s..t creek. Another tiny proof up here in the wilds of Lancashire is the harvest this weekend on our allotment: four open-air grown baby cucumbers; plenty of courgettes; and even a handful of raspberries. The spinach in our garden still looks healthy and youthful. It's mid-October. The baby cucumbers were very welcome, one part of Ruth's salad box for lunch today. Not so the courgettes, so eagerly awaited in early summer but by now hanging around like a bad smell or a foolish government minister trying to avoid resignation.

Speaking of which, Liam Fox finally accepted the inevitable. I had harsh words with one of my friends the other day, who has never taken me on a foreign trip with him and whose office I have never visited. Perhaps it's because I don't know what transactional advantage even means.