All the best for your retirement, Westi. You may think life will slow down but you will soon wonder how you ever found time to go to work!

I have been retired 27 years now and still fill every minute of the day with useful things, well, useful to me, anyway ....

Excitement: we had 5mm rain this afternoon so at least the soil surface looks wet now!

How horrible for you, both retropants and Geoff, albeit caused by different culprits. It's so demoralising when you have spent such a lot of effort (and money) on something and it's destroyed or damaged. My commiserations! We have not checked the allotment yet but no doubt there will be damage there...

Primrose, can you not call in a professional? We and our immediate neighbour saw a rat in the garden about two months ago, called a 'rat catcher' who came the same day, placed some bait boxes in the dry stone walls, then called twice more, a week apart each time, to check on the boxes and we have no...

If any of you really end up with a glut of courgettes: slice and freeze them - very useful to add to soups and stews in winter.

Our local heritage railway with its ancient steam and diesel engines and even more ancient carriages always attracts our attention and, like the true local yokels we are, we always wave enthusiastically. However, the trains mostly run at weekends whilst we do most of our allotment work during week.

The culprits here are pheasants and house sparrows - the former are especially fond of gooseberries, peas and broad beans, the latter will nibble at anything green .....

A friend has a large monkey puzzle tree which has produced huge fruits this year. We understand this is edible, but I have two questions: How does one harvest these fruit or does one have to wait until they drop? How does one eat them?

Any personal experiences?

Our Rocket potatoes are flowering, so it won't be long!

Still not a drop of rain, so spent all morning watering ........

They are not common in the north, Geoff, but are gradually spreading northwards. A few years ago people were really excited at the Heysham Nature Reserve (near Morecambe) when one turned up and we have seen one on the pond at our village Nature Reserve here. Lovely photo of a beautiful dragonfly!

It means your garlic has bolted, probably from a stress (too cold, too hot, too dry?). You can still eat the bulbs but they won't attain full size and won't keep.The 'scapes' are said to be tasty, but I have never tried them. Some of my shallots are in a very similar state this year, Colin. Must be ...

Sounds like non-pollination to me. Have you tried playing at being a bee, viv? Going from flower to flower with a soft artists brush? That's what I used to do when we grew strawberries in the greenhouse. If, as you say, they really have "no centre", perhaps it's a growth problem like not e...

Why what other colour of rain is there ,don't forget this is the industrial north

Ha, ha!

We DID get some rain today, all 2.5mm of it. At least it has dampened the atmosphere.

We have commented about the wealth of blossom this year (presumably, the colder winter temperatures ripened the wood and caused more blossom?), especially the bird cherries, hawthorns, both white and red and the rowans. And on the ground, our garden is a sea of colour at the moment. Just looking out...

Lucky Geoff, it drizzled here half an hour ago for a very short time, then stopped. One of our offspring in Clapham, North Yorkshire, had a thunderstorm and heavy downpour and another offspring in Lothersdale, not that far from us, had a heavy downpour, but nobbut a trickle here ........