A gift, a flower and a pea-leaf tea-leaf.

I sowed a row of peas two or three weeks ago. I made them pigeon-proof by first covering the seeds with a layer of fleece and then putting a row of prickly pea-sticks on each side of the row. Next, I hung some shiny dangly metal things from a string suspended above the sticks.

Today I lifted the fleece to see whether or not any shoots had emerged. I'm pleased to say that I have had a pretty good germination rate and I now have a row of pea shoots which looks very promising. I took a close-up photo of one of them. I didn't notice at the time but now that I've downloaded the photo I can see that a cheeky uninvited visitor, probably a mouse, has breached my anti-pigeon defences and has taken a bite out of the leaf. So now it looks like the pigeons are not the only pests to contend with.

Other news from the plot today is that one of the rhubarb plants has produced a flower. Guided by the consensus of opinion from an array of gardening books I have removed the flower so that, in theory, growth will now be concentrated on the stalks and not on the flower. The smell from the fresh cut rhubarb, as I removed the flower, was deliciously mouth-watering. It was so good that I could not resist taking a bite out of the flower stalk. To say it was bitter is something of an understatement. It caused a reflex reaction in my mouth which stretched and tightened my lips and forced my tongue to curl and arch and stick out while I ran to the nearest tap for a mouthful of water to sloosh away the bitterness.

Also today I happened to be in the right place at the right time when a local farmer called at the allotment site. He farms a few thousand acres of organic vegetables and he had a very large seed tray containing a couple of hundred broccoli plugs which were surplus to his requirements and free to a good home. I helped myself to two dozen of the little plants and I am now looking forward to harvesting supermarket grade organic broccoli in the coming months. This was quite fortuitous because the calabrese seeds which I have sown at home have failed to germinate.