What is it with the weather this Bank Holiday?
I know one of the boasts of the British allotment holder is meant to be that we are happy to brave it come rain, snow or shine.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad of the downpours – saves me hours of filling watering cans from the plot's various butts and tin baths.
But come off it – HAIL? In May?!

My sheltering options are severely limited as we haven't got around to sorting out a shed, and our greenhouse was all but destroyed in last autumn's great winds.
Natives will remember the gales reached 75mph along the Mersey coastline, so I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised when we lost around 13 panes of glass.
The entire thing actually lifted up and moved eight inches to the south, and in the aftermath we found a water butt, buckets and pieces of glass on neighbouring plots - very Wizard of Oz...

Thankfully no-one at the allotments was hurt, but it was a bit of a blow for Lynne, Bryn, Simon and I, as we’d only just managed to build the greenhouse a few months earlier.
Like all good allotment furniture it was recycled – well, requisitioned from a friends’ garden (thanks Martin and Helen) – and it was a labour of love to get it up.
Luckily all but one of the roof panes survived the autumn winds, so I managed to shelter temporarily when the hail suddenly started yesterday (Sun).
But it was no protection at all when the heavens opened proper.
Within seconds I was drenched through, and scared to look at the newly planted out lettuces, which will constitute a minor miracle if they survive this year’s slug explosion (more in later blogs), never mind these repeated lashings of heavy rain.
It was no tough decision to abandon tools and leg it to Taskers to price up poly-whatever-its-called…
But at £100 for a sheet that would just about repair two thirds of the missing panes, it’s beyond our budget at the moment.
It’s going to be a big weekend when we do finally get around to repairing the greenhouse.
It’s in a pretty sorry state, minus the majority of its walls and covered in bindweed, which has silently slithered its way around every post like some kind of sinister Dr Who-style choking monster.
I know there are a load of bamboo canes, chicken wire, spare tools and seed trays under the matt of weeds that is now the greenhouse floor.
At least one consolation is that it looks such a tip the plot thieves might just overlook it (on their last visit they found the cheapo beer I’d stashed for slug traps - but left the antique tools!).I've spent the rest of the weekend planning and potting up at home.
Lynne and Bryn say they have some climbing squashes ready to go in once we do find the missing bamboo canes (the regular pumpkins took up far too much floor space last year).
I’ve finally used up some pots made of peat which I bought a couple of years ago (completely unnecessary waste of money and resources by the way - much better to make your own decomposable pots from newspaper - demonstration to follow in a later blog).
I now have a nice selection of runner beans, courgettes and carrot seeds germinating, which, weather permitting, should be ready to go out this weekend...

(The pic above shows the first ever courgette seedling we planted out in June/July 2005.)

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