The plot was flooded again on Friday; we've had over four inches of rain over the last few days, 90% of it on Friday. I did go down and check how things were, just before the stream broke its banks. I might as well have been standing under a waterfall.

I've split the big beehive, in order to raise queens. There are masses of drones, so I should get good mating. They got in a real mood with me yesterday; that's the second bad stinging I've had this summer. As far as the garden goes, this year's crops are pretty much a washout. It's so bad it's depressing, and on top of that I've overdone it doing the GCSE marking. I finished on Friday, just as I got to the point where I could no longer concentrate, and I was getting daily attacks of migraine, which are still happening.

Yesterday was our 12th wedding anniversary. We had people saying we shouldn't be together, and people trying to sabotage the wedding. The then minister from church wrote asking me not to go ahead as a Christian shouldn't marry a Muslim, and I had one hysterical fundamentalist ring me tup to say I was going to hell. But we're still together, and where are they?

The rain never stops, the spuds have got blight so the toms will soon follow, and the summer is fast turning into a disaster. All I can say is that my plans for the bees are working out, with one big colony churning out loads of drones, and two small ones which have no drones, but which can be split into two smaller colonies for queen raising. The early garlic is good, as are the elephants, though the maincrops, which I have yetto lift, are dying from rust. I've never seen it affect plants so badly.

The main thing now is to make sure I'm ready in good time for next year, since in this new job I don't have much time off at Easter, and no summer half term, so that's a vital coupls of weeks lost. Meanwhile, I'm still bogged down with GCSE marking; they've roped me in to do the Roman Catholic paper as well as my normal one. It's an irritant, not merely because its a horribly boring job which needs 100% concentration, but because the denominational answer is taken to be the correct one, and that's bound to annoy me. I do get the odd gem though. One kid answered 'What does catholic mean?' with 'It's posher and more elegant than the Church of England and snobs go there'. Obviously, whoever it was doesn't like their (Catholic) school.

I hate hybrid Italian bees! Hybrids between native Apis mellifera mellifera and imported Italian queens have a horrible tendency to sting. I've been building up my native hive, which is now getting massively strong, while the two I bought have been building up slowly, despite weekly removal of brood.

My native hive is still the best-tempered of the three despite its greater strength. One of the new ones is OK, but the other is getting nastier by the week. Yesterday I had a really good stinging from them, with bee after bee going up my arm, and bees all over my sleeve, stinging it like mad. I got two stings from bees inside my veil, when mostly ones that get in there think about nothing but escape. Not nice at all, I don't want bees like that. I've always avoided the 'space suit' type of bee gear; it ought to be unnecessary with only a few hives. The way to go is to avoid the nasty bees.

The crazy thing is that back in the 1920's, Brother Adam, the most influential UK beekeeper of his time, concluded that the native British bee was, firstly, extinct, and secondly, nasty-tempered. My experience, and that of others who keep them, is that they are far from extinct, and reliably good tempered. Unlike the unpredictable hybrids a lot of bigger beekeepers seem to go for.

It's been some time since I posted; this has been due to work pressures, exhaustion, and recently, the amount of GCSE marking I've taken on. For the last couple of weeks, I've been in school all day, then marking till 11pm or so. Meanwhile, of course, I've been getting further and further behind on the allotment. The end is in sight, however!

I got a couple more colonies of bees a couple of weeks ago; they're hybrid Italians, docile, prolific, and, from what the guy told me, probably swarmier than my existing strain. I need the bees, but I don't particularly want the genetics. So I've been keepng these colonies small by swapping frames of capped brood out into my original colony on a weekly basis. This is now getting to the point where it needs a second broodbox if this is to continue. The theory is that this keeps the new colonies small enough not to produce drones, while the original one produces loads. It can then be split, and it will produce new queens. There should be enough drones by late summer to ensure decent mating, and with so many bees available, there should be some honey despite the split. I just hope it works! The big danger is swarming, but if it looks like doing so, I'll just split it then and there.

Meanwhile, I'm a month behind with my planting out. Fortunately, it's still June, and with term coming to an end,. it should be easier to get to the plot.

It's been a while since I posted; I've had computer problems, upgraded a lot of stuff, then had the motherboard die on me and had to replace that, the CPU and the memory as well. So the computer's been almost entirely rebuilt over the last couple of weeks. On top of that, I've had to take time off work this week due to exhaustion; missing my Easter break doing extra revision classes is really affecting me.

I've been too tired to do a lot on the allotment, but I've managed to get the purple-podded peas and some of the sweet peas planted out. I've replanted purple-possed pea and ne plus ultra, since the latter was almost wiped out by mice, and put in a late lot of crimson-flowered broad bean, in pots. I need to get some more planting done over the weeken, if the weather gives me a chance.

The bees weren't expanding beyond 2 1/2 frames of brood, and I was getting worried, but they had a couple of half-drawn plastic frames just outside the broodnest, and I was wondering whether they just didn't want to use them. So I moved one good frame in on one side, within the broodnest, and a frame of nasty drone cells just outside it, on the other. After a week, I found yesterday that the former was well and truly laid up, with 3 1/2 frames of brood present, and the latter was well on the way to being chewed away; the bees didn't like it at all, and it had great holes in it. So I moved some more good frames in. I'm a lot happier about that colony now.

Several weeks ago, a wren built a nest among the garlic plaits hanging from the shed roof. The males build up to ten, and the female chooses one to lay in. as there was no activity to be seen, i'd assumed they weren't using this one, but now they're flying in and out all the time.

I've been going like mad the last few days, potting up seedlings. I've done the tomatoes, and almost all the corn, but i still have the squashes to do. It's not a job I enjoy, but it has to be done. At least I've got more space this year, with the extra mini-greenhouse.

The bees are still on 2 1/2 frames of brood, but with noticeably more bees in the hive than last week.

I got my parsnips planted yesterday; a bit late but not too late. After having problems with germination in previous years I tend to delay planting until I'm sure about the weather.

We've had light rain and drizzle all day here. It's badly needed.

I actually managed a couple of days off in the week, and I've been going like mad, trying to catch up on the allotment. I haven't had too much energy though, I've been too tired. I managed to mulch the spuds, with both beds now deeply buried in grass cuttings. Mice had a go at the peas and sweet peas, but the damage isn't terminal; it just means that one or two sweet pea varieties will be a bit thin on the ground.

I stayed late the other night hoping to see some bats; several were out in the gloaming, flying low up and down the lane, probably pipistrelles, as that's far and away the commonest. There was a kestrel out hunting a bit earlier, Venus was very bright, and I could see the dark circle of the moon in the arms of the new crescent, glimmering in the earthlight.

The bees are steadily building up, with two and a half frames of brood, and most of the frame in the centre full of it. They'll be popping shortly.

I took these over the weekend; I was so tired after 35 teaching hours during the week, doing extra revision classes, that a long session I planned on the allotment turned into a couple of hours' aimless pottering. I even got there and realised that I'd completely forgotten to change into old clothes!

The Arum creticum is a mingy little thing, but it's the first time it's flowered in several years. As you can see, the Trilliums have been drooping in the heat; this is a habit of theirs as they really want all-day shade which I can't give them. They perk up overninght, and hopefully with the forecast cooler temperatures on the way, they should be better shortly. The garlic pic shows an early variety on the left, and elephant garlic on the right. The Broad Beans are coming up nicely, but I don't have many seeds in the ground yet; I tend to be pretty cautious about planting. I've started taking trays of seedlings down to the mini-greenhouses, much to Namissa's relief, and more's going to be planted this week.

I've got an easy week during the mocks; no normal lessons, and as I've got an odd student coming in for extra tuition, I've escaped doing any invigilation. So, at last, there's time to start catching up on myself.

The bee pic shows what happened when I knocked one of the boxes askew in one of the hives that had died out over the winter. An enthusiastic robbing seession immediately followed. It's obviously far easier for bees to steal honey than to make their own, and they do so to the point, sometimes, of wiping out weak colonies. The interesting thing is the the entrance to that hive has been left open, a couple of feet from their own, and they haven't found it. I use very small entrances, with mesh floors and false entrances to the rear, to confuse wasps, and it obviously works on bees as well. Since they're my own bees, I'm just leaving them to rob it out.

I had a look at the surviving colony over the weekend; they now have two frames of brood, and are beginning to expand nicely.

I've got the Rocket potatoes planted and mulched, planted a bed of Charlotte, and planted out Verbascum, Aquilegia and Hollyhocks that I've been overwintering in pots. It's been more like June than April today, but after last year, I hope it doesn't last to long!

The bees are still on a frame and a half of brood, and I spotted the first drone of the year, with a dozen or so capped drone cells scattered about. This is really early, and I heard yesterday of someone's hive swarming. This is exceptional for April 7th. I re-marked the queen, as the original mark had rubbed off. I've sent off a cheque for two nucs (nuclei - small colonies), which should go a long way towards replenishing my stock of bees. I've asked for ones with last year's queens, so I should have them shortly, and hopefully, I should still be on the way to a decent honey harvest.

Back to work tomorrow (yes, I know it'as supposed to be Bank Holiday) and I've got a week of seven hour teaching days, doing Easter revision classes. I'm not looking forward to it.

These crown imperials are looking cheerful at the moment, and I wish I could say the same for my more conventional orangey-red ones. these are sulking though, year after year. I find them pretty fussy; if planted in one spot, they do well; a few yards away, they do badly. The other clump do seem to get a little stronger from one year to the next though, so maybe time will sort it out.

I've really let myself in for it this Easter; I signed up for extra revision classes, thinking I'd just get a few, and I've been overwhelmed by the rush. i've been teaching every morning this last week, with the odd afternoon as well, but at least that gave me a little time for the allotment. This coming week, I've got seven hours' teaching a day, all the way through. It won't leave any time or energy for anything.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm getting behind again. I had hoped to use the holiday to dig over some of the ground I've left for the last couple of years, but there's been no chance for that. I won't need the ground for a couple of months though, so there's time yet. All the onions are in, and I'll be planting early potatoes (Rocket) later today, a bit tardily. I've bought a second mini greenhouse, which is going to be needed badly, and I've been planting seeds in pots; there are trays of sweet peas, and a couple of heritage pea varieties; Ne Plus Ultra and Purple-Podded. I haven't planted anything outside yet though apart from broad beans, which are just coming through.

I had a little old bean seed, which had shrivelled, turned blackish, and looked mouldy. I didn't extect it to do anything, but out of curiosity, I planted it alongside the new. To my surprise, it's coming up strongly.

I've acquired this over the last week; it's been sitting by the comittee hut for a couple of years, and nobody knew what to do with it. it's going to take a bit of work, but there's nothing to stop it being turned into a decent garden bench.

I checked the bees yesterday; they now have a frame and a half of brood, lots of pollen coming in, and they seem to be OK. I've found a local source of nucs, and I'm very tempted to get a couple. I can't really afford it, but the extra bees would make a real difference right now. Apart from that, i've been putting seeds into the mini greenhouse, and I've added a second. There's still a chill in the air in the morning, but it'll soon pass.

Back to work on Monday, teaching extra revision classes. It's destroyed my Easter break, but I need the money unfortunately.

It's been a hectic weekend with my daughter's 15th birthday yesterday. I managed to plant another bed of onion sets, plant a tray of leek seed, and start six varieties of pre-World War 1 sweer peas I got in a pack from Plants of Distinction, but that's about as far as I got. On the windowsill beside me, I have 16 varieties of tomato sprouting happily, along with squashes. I didn't get anything done today as I was at church all morning, then had to go to a site committee meeting, and didn't feel well anyway.

Right now I'm about to plant 'Double Standard' corn from Real Seeds; I haven't tried it before so it's a bit of an unknown quantity. They haven't done it before, and the variety they usually do all got eaten by mice when I tried it last year.

I managed to do a bit on the allotment over the weekend, despite headaches (I had to come home from school on Friday with an attack of migraine) and cold weather on Sunday. One bed of onion sets in now in and mulched. I've been planting peppers and aubergines, which are now germinating on top of the water heater, in the warmest spot in the house, and tomatoes, which are under the water heater. I'm growing half a dozen varieties which did well outside last year, plus a couple of plants each of ten more I haven't tried.

Between work and redecorating it's a struggle just to do that much right now!

Wet weekend

It's throwing it down today, but at least yesterday was OK. The bees in Hive 3 were flying freely, bringing in a bit of pollen, so I grabbed the opportunity to do an early inspection. Hive 1 has died out. It had plenty of bees a couple of weeks ago, but there were only a few left, all dead, not a sign of brood, and stores still left in the comb. That's typial of the winter losses I get, and as there's never any brood, I think these later winter dieouts are down to queen failure. Queen mating is a constant problem. So that's two gone. The last one, thank goodness, had bees and a little patch of mostly young brood the size of my palm. So it sems to be OK at least.

I planted the broad beans, a bit late, and I'm doing my seed ordering this weekend, again a bit late. Most of the veg come from the Real Seed Catalogue at http://www.vidaverde.co.uk/ , who do proper varieties, not F1's, and offer plenty of good quality seed ina packet. I also put in small orders from Marshalls at http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/, where I found a couple of heirloom peas, Purple-Podded and Ne Plus Ultra, Plants of Distinction at http://www.plantsofdistinction.co.uk/ , who have loads of interesting vegetable and flower varieties, and Chiltern Seeds at http://www.edirectory.co.uk/chilternseeds/ , who again have a really interesting selection. I've ordered Couve Tronchuda, an interesting heirloom cabbage, and a couple of other things.

I had a hectic week last week, trying to catch up with work I should have done last half term when I was struggling because of a virus. Today has ben another bad day, coping with manic seven-year-olds in a local primary school. Some didn't seem to understand what was expected of them in a school, and one lad, by no means stupid, didn't know how to do up his own buttons.

It was a wet weekend, but I managed a bit of digging between showers. Now that's sorted, I'm going through my seed collection, sorting out what needs to go in over the next few weeks. I had hoped to plant my broad beans this weekend, but no chance due to the weather and the amount of digging I still had to do.

What a difference from a couple of days ago! Heavy rain last night pretty well wiped out the snow, which was already melting steadily. Just here there's nothing left but the remnants of the odd snowman. It's all gone on one side of my plot, but there's a fair bit still on the other, which is shaded in the mornings. On the other side, where the ground slopes towards the north, away from the sun, some plots still have a lot on them. I managed to do a fair bit of digging, but I still felt shattered afterwards. I'm feeling a lot better than I was though.

Snow!

I'm still coughing and feeling bad, but at least the headaches have gone. All Birmingham schools were closed for the last two days of the half term due to snow. Thusday was dreadful; the college I work at was open, but at least it's only a few minutes' walk away. One guy made it in from Leicester. All the staff were there; there are three colleges in the group; London had ten staff off, and Cambridge 'several'. A lot of students didn't turn up. Yesterday I should have been doing supply somewhere, but the schools were still shut so I had an unscheduled day off.

Actually, it wasn't too bad for most of the day; roads were clear until about four, when snow started to build up again. The evening was chaotic. I went for a walk around the site; the pics speak for themselves.

Bad weekend

Last weekend was the first for three weeks that I was feeling well enough to spend more and on hour or so on the plot, but it was really bad in another way. My wife was due to fly to Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone) on Monday, but there was a last minute hitch with her Sierra Leonean passport. The result was that she ended up flying on her British passport with no visa. We thought she probably wouldn't be allowed on the plane, and as she had a non-tranferrable ticket, she'd have had to pay all over again to get on Friday's flight. It's not cheap either. I had a splitting headache for two days solid, until I heard that she'd managed to blag her way onto the flight. It vanished as soon as I got the news. There was no problem at the other end; you can bribe your way through anything over there. I managed to speak to her briefly last night on a very bad line; she was o the ferry from Lungi Airport to the mainland at the time.

I managed to do a bit of digging, and the snowdrops and Hellebores are doing really well.

Blood Diamond

I'm still not feeling well, and I only managed an hour on the allotment this weekend. So there's nothing really to report. Yesterday we managed to go out for a slightly belated birthday meal at a Vietnamese in town, and then went to see 'Blood Diamond' at the cinema over the road. Namissa's Sierra Leonean, and anyone watching it can imagine for themselves how we felt when the girls got caught up in the chaos.

Kumbi, who was 11 at the time, was briefly in the fighting just after the coup on May 25th 1997, which was orchestrated by someone living just round the corner from us in Ladywood. She was rescued by the US navy after the Red Cross organised a ceasefire to get civilians out, and the first we heard about it was when she was in teh air bound for Stanstead. Fortunately, after endless delays, we'd managed to get clearance to bring the two of them about a week before. She arrived badly traumatised, and is still affected by it all. Mina was five at the time, too young to understand what was happening, and never saw any fighting. But she was taken upcountry, the phone lines were down, and it took six weeks before we knew she was safe. Then it was another six weeks before we could get her taken over the border to Guinea, and flown out.

I managed to track down a link to a short filmclip about a girl who spent a weekend with us a few years ago. When she was 13, the rebels killed all her family and cut her hands off. She struck lucky, and was on her way to be adopted by a couple in Canada when we met her. She had brand new artificial hands, which looked quite convincing, but were totally useless, so they just got taken off and left behind the door with her shoes as soon as she came in the house. It's the clip at the bottom of the page.

http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/f00685?opendocument

The film makes inevitable minor errors, but the portrayal of the bloody madness in rebel-held areas is pretty accurate, as is the obsession with diamonds. The war was nothing but an excuse for all parties to take advantage and mine like crazy. Definitely worth watching.

Windy Week

I've been unwell all week, and I've really struggled to cope with teaching; I haven't been fit for anything else. But I did get down to the site briefly today, just to check how things were after the gales. Several of the more wobbly gates and bits of fence have come down, but there's no serious damage anywhere, no more trees down, and nothing at all on my plot. I'm not too surprised really; all the hedges reduce the force of the wind to the point where we don't often get anything to worry about in the way of wind damage.

Difficult week

I've had a bad week; I had a bad cold, and coping with school has been a nightmare. I had a really hard day on Monday covering art in a difficult comprehensive, then struggled to cope with three days of very intensive work in college. At least the students are an understanding lot. Friday was easier; I was feeling a little better, and just had a bunch of noisy six and seven year olds to cope with.

I got to the allotment today and found the first snowdrops are out; Galanthus caucasicus and a couple of G elwisii, not the ordinary G nivalis varieties. The pic is of Caucasicus, my favourite. It's a lot bigger than the normal ones, and not hard to find. I've planted some Tricyrtis (toad lily) seeds, and found that a pot of Helleborus argutifolius I planted last year are germinating merrily.

The rats have been busy in the shed; a pumpkin has been finished off, and the whole place stank of rodent urine. It's a problem every winter. and the only real solution would be a new shed. The old one is falling down anyway. I put down what poison I had, and if I keep going that should at least limit the numbers.

I've done some more digging on a flowerbed I'm trying to clear, and spread half a dozen barrow loads of soil from one of my mountains. These are great heaps I made in the early days on the plot, when I was digging out vast quantities of turf and weeds. I just piled it up, covered it with plastic, and left it. I've been spreading it gradually ever since, but there's still some way to go. Once spread, it produces massive flushes of weeds the first year, then settles down, and it's really good loam.

The end of another year

I'm starting this here as a continution of my blog at http://journals.aol.co.uk/rsbrenchley/ThisandThat/ . Hopfully this site is going to be more photo friendly. If it is, then I suppose I'll need another camera as the kids keep borrowing the current one.

The two pics of the plot were taken on a bleak winter's day. I haven't managed to get much done over Christmas as I've had a nasty fluey bug, and between that and the weather, I just didn't feel like it. I did manage to get a bit of digging done on the better days though. There's not too much now as every year I get more ground cleared of weeds and mulched. Once I get to that point, I don't need to dig it again, just keep mulching. I've dug over the old Jerusalem artichoke bed, and after the drought I hardly found anything in it at all. I was really surprised. I no longer need it as a screen now the hedge has grown, so I'll just plant a few and use the space for rhubarb.

Since then, I've been working on a weedy flowerbed, and I had to lift the most enormous Crinum bulbs. The pic, which was intended to be the last, has come out first, with a fork for scale. I'll get the hang of this site eventually, I suppose. When I put them in five years ago they were just large bulbs. They flowered for the first time last year, and I was very reluctant to lift them as they don't like disturbance. There was ground elder growing through them though, and it just had to go. So I ended up trenching under them, breaking enormous fleshy roots that went right down into the subsoil. They'll get over it, in time.