I was away last weekend, so no gardening, but I was pleased to see that home got some rain while I was under blue skies in Estonia and Finland!

The newly blooming geums welcomed me at the plot, along with some very long grass. My first job had to be picking some mare’s tail and unwinding bindweed from strangling my speedwell.

I watered all the seedlings. The beetroot and carrot need weeding already, there’s no definite sign of chrysanthemums, but something is coming up in the callaloo lines. There are also good signs of seedlings (and weeds) in my composted areas and other seed zones. One cosmos of two has come up in the shed pots.

The silly zinnias that have been “growing” at home in pots are now in the little bed assigned to zinnias, along with a couple of equally silly cosmos. Now they should just get on with growing – of course assuming that they aren’t too insulted by me having been near their roots… The big bed that’s allotted to zinnias doesn’t have anything in it yet. I’ll put the seed in and keep my fingers crossed for some super speedy germination. I think more than just zinnias will have to fill this bed though.

I dug over bed 3 after edging it and sowed the rainbow chard around the edge, leaving room for a runner bean wigwam. I remembered to wash off my fork over the bed afterwards, in case the soil was the cause of the white fungal rot on last year’s onions.

Perennials are waking up, such as a poppy in the right bed. Some flower mix sown on the ledge in a previous season has now given me a Californian poppy and a couple of wallflowers for the first time. There’s a hole in the ledge that needs filling. I’ll probably just pour some of my meadow mix in there.

I sowed more seed in bed 1, adding asters on the left and malope and a tiny amount of mauve poppy seed to the far right corner. My first job tomorrow is to go and get the obelisk at last.