Garlic

Not much of a garlic crop this year. A lot of it succumbed to white rot or never really got going.

Red Onions

Harvested half of the red onions. Didn't have any problem with slugs - unlike my friend in Stroud - although some failed to swell to more than twice the size of the original sets. Don't know whether it was patchy soil fertility or dodgy sets.

Flora

Aloe Vera



Dahlia & Hebe



Olive



Sweet pea

Prize Vegetable

Despite appearances, this chap isn't having a dump. But he has just dumped rubbish in the hedgerow of the cyclepath, opposite this house in Clay Bottom. He might be the owner, tenant or gardener and he may or may not be the person who has been dumping household and garden waste here and on the nearby path up to Rajani's warehouse for many months.

Below: Some of the rubbish dumped on the path to Rajani's earlier this year.

Carpet Moth ?

Looking a bit like a stealth bomber, this carpet moth turned up in the garden. Unless I've jumped to the wrong assumption again ?

Lost In Music

Read the very entertaining musical memoir 'Lost In Music' by Giles Smith, one time member of 80s band Cleaners From Venus now, disappointingly, a motoring correspondent for The Grauniad . I say disappointingly, because now he spends his time and words describing cars as 'sex on wheels' whereas once he was a bit of an anarcho hippie, rode a bicycle and was excited by Trevor Horn and XTC.

Very funny book though. As John Peel wrote in the blurb, "If you have ever watched a band play or bought a pop record, you should read it." I wish I'd read it thirteen years ago when it came out.

Fodder

Very productive time for the allotment. Harvesting lots of new season kale, carrots, broad beans, lettuces, courgettes, new potatoes, artichokes, onions, garlic and beetroot.



Beans, tomatoes and sweet corn just around the corner.

Datura/Brugmansia

aka Angel's Trumpet, Devil's Trumpet, Thornapple, Jimson Weed - a member of the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family and relative of the tomato. Not that you'd confuse it with a tomato, unless you ate some of it, in which case you could believe or do anything.