Lovely Rain!

My...... did it rain last night? I woke at 1.57am precisely to hear it thundering down, monsoon-like, on the roof (we are a chalet bungalow so there is a lot of roof in direct contact with the ceiling!) and I was still kept awake by the noise 25 minutes later. I wasn't sorry because my plot sorely needs it.
I took this photo on Friday after sowing some bean (actually "pea bean") seeds and installing the poles and watering the bed copiously.

I had also wanted to sow some peas in the next bed away fom the camera. I cleared and tilled that bed also on Friday, so it was ready (if a bit lumpy), but the peas looked so shrivelled in the packet, and they were in the last month of their "sow before" date, so I brought them home and soaked them til today. I actually sowed them at twice the density recommended on the packet. If they all come up, which I doubt, I will take every other one to have in salad as pea shoots.....yummy!!!The soil was so soft this afternoon that it was a doddle to put them in (anointed with petrol to foil the mice...!)

Early in the week I must go and net them because so many plotters have lost all their newly emerging pea and bean shoots to the rabbbits. Some said it was mice....! I can net against rabbits but if it is mice then I haven't a hope.

I think I forgot to note on here that I sowed some French beans for the freezer in the next bed behind the broad beans.

I am nearly ready to sigh with relief at having caught up. There is one more bed to clear, and then a load of weeding to do around the raspberries, gooseberry, and globe artichokes. I also want to clear all the weedy between-bed paths and restore them to bare earth. They are so much easier to cope with when I can just hoe them once a week, when I hoe the beds.

Everything at the plot looks happy to have had a soaking last night.