Garden woes

The garden has left me a bit demoralised - it has taken such a battering from the weather and from the dogs. I had high hopes of the flowers, but although everything I planted came up, they were badly trampled by the animals - despite my pleading to the family not to let them out unless supervised. This lone sunflower sums it up really . . . desperately trying its best to brighten up the garden, but not quite succeeding.

There has been some success on the produce side, for a first attempt anyway. The tomatoes have been attacked by blight and the wind and rain, but we've had some fruit. Garden Pearl (below) has been most successful. The runner beans have cropped really heavily, the dwarf beans okay, the carrots okay and we're getting a bit fed up with courgettes.

The cucumbers have been a bit of a mixed bag - some tasting really sweet others being bitter. The beetroot (only one row because I hate them) have not grown very big, but Mrs DW says they have been very nice.

Onions patchy, parsnips useless (only a few germinated), strawberries nice and sweet but few and far between. The lettuce started off really successfully, especially the cut and come again variety, but my attempts to have a succession of lettuce to eat have been devastated by the plague of slugs and snails which I've been powerless to stop.

The apple tree has looked full of fruit, but they are very small (probably due to the dry spring).

The chillies now look edible, but we haven't tried them yet.

Finally a bit of colour - a cosmos, I think.