Raindrops keep falling on my veg........

I had been struggling today, trying to think of an apt title for this blog - something that sums up the whole soggy situation.  Lots of songs have gone through my head with keywords like 'rain, wet and drip' being quite prominent.  I think my final choice covers it.

I changed the blog's background too. Fluffy white clouds scudding across an azure blue sky are but a hazy memory (about March actually). It was a nice background to study too and lose yourself, albeit briefly, in that image, but I feel that the green, overgrown jungle look of the chosen background, in reality, is a truer reflection of the garden at the present moment.  The other options of dark, menacing rain clouds were too depressing to display - you just need to look out of the window for that.......

So you probably figured out that it's been a touch wet in Leeds this week.  The slugs are having a field day, munching their way through our crops and the grass is becoming a bit of an issue as it KEEPS RAINING!!!

Yesterday (Thursday) I took the children up into the polytunnel.  With half term last week, the weeds took advantage and started to invade the interior of the greenhouse.  So the children did a grand job of weeding and tidying up. I had been to the Garden Centre and bought several Growbags for our tomatoes and had dumped them in the car park.  Armed with the wheelbarrow, the children brought the bags in to the greenhouse and laid them out in rows.

We then went outside to rescue our sunflowers from the slug onslaught - a lot of the sunflowers had to be thrown on the compost, eaten to stumpy stalks, but we managed to save quite a few.  Edie was delighted to catch slugs red handed munching their way through the stems, and equally delighted in peeling off the offending anthropods and re-homing them.  The rest of the children, including the boys, were rather squeamish, wringing their hands in disgust and picking up pots rather gingerly and passing them onto Tom who emptied the poor plants into the compost.

Today, Mrs W and I had four boys come up who brought in the remaining grow bags from the car park and started to plant the tomatoes in the bags.They did a brilliant job and worked very quickly.  The heavens opened and the rain was so hard, that we were unable to talk, such was the noise of the rain beating on the plastic of the polytunnel. At one point we wondered if we would get back into school!  It did ease off for us to make a dash.

The persistent and heavy showers spoilt the rest of the afternoon as the tomatoes were the only job in the polytunnel and it was too wet to work outside - though there is tons to do.   Several of the bean beds have been attacked by our unwelcomed visitors - the slugs and need replacing.  Hopefully this time next week, my blog title will be more optimistic, the background a lot sunnier and the garden will be back on track and Leeds will be basking in a Mediterranean climate!  You can always dream.........