There's one thing you can guarantee with great midweek weather: It'll be crap by the weekend.

It's been nice to wander over to the patch after work. The view from Links Allotments across the city is great.

Even nicer to see the bugs poking their heads out from their winter slumber holes to munch on my newly planted lettuce and spinach plants.

Things have come along nicely over the last two weeks. Plot cleared, soil chopped up, raked and weeded.

Some plu plants are in, radish seed sowed and tomato plants are finding their feet on the window sill in the flat.

My broad beans and garlic seem to survived the ravages of the winter, but that could be early false hope.

What is perhaps more remarkable is how Barbara prised herself from American Idol to attack the dense strawberry patch.