Monday 29th June. Drifting days. We slide from June into July. The winds are gusty and the showers need dodging. A topsy-turvy sort of Summer. The first dahlias. A horrid hard red so they are not pictured here. I will wait for the dinner plates before I bother taking my camera to the end of the garden. Some small quinces drop in the blustery weather and I mourn them. There are many still left on the tree though, and they seem to be swelling. And really, who needs more than three quinces a year?

Tuesday 30th June. After all the rain, the kitchen garden puts on a spurt. Savoy cabbages seem to double in size overnight, and the Fordhook Giant chard seems like it will live up to its name after all. The earlier hot weather has taken its toll on the rainbow chard though, and I pull out at least half that have bolted. I collect the first poppy seed heads. It is a fine line between collecting too early and losing them all to the wind. The ones that rattle are ready.

Other seed collected this week:

• Orlaya

• Foxgloves (I collect from white, but most will revert back to pink)

• Cornflowers

• Honesty (and sown straight away)

• Daucus Carota

• Bladder campion

Wednesday 1 July. A more peaceful day. Some hoeing, cutting, tying in of sweet peas. The hazel tunnel, so beautiful and intricate, has suffered in the weather. The rods are cracking as fast as I can bind them together with string. In a few more weeks, it will be a solid mass of sweet peas and the odd runner bean and the fractures will be hidden.

Thursday 2 July. It is the night before a day off. I walk the dogs the long way round, going up to see the horses and come back along the lane. The fatness of the hazels in the hedge take me by surprise. The sloes are starting to be touched with purple, like a bruise. I harvest kohlrabi and grate it into yoghurt stirred with mustard and lemon juice. The easiest form of a Summer slaw. Courgette and herb fritters from an old Miss Pickering blog post. A glass of wine.

Friday 3 July. I have big jobs on the list for the day off but I start with photography. This is partly pleasure, and partly to capture the vegetables coming out of the kitchen garden which will be part of the Nourish collection next Spring. I think I have decided on Cavolo Nero, beetroots, kohlrabi, the best Carouby de Maussane mangetout (prolific even in a pot, and so tasty), rainbow chard and Musselburgh leeks. 

I could have had raw kale salad for lunch. I didn't, I had it fried with garlic and lemon, and a sliding heap of scrambled eggs.

Saturday 4 July. If I had to identify one character trait that makes me a bad gardener, it is a lack of ruthlessness. Plants self seed in the wrong place, and I let them stay. They grow too big, too poorly, they bolt or flop, they grow in the middle of the path, and I cannot bring myself to call it quits. Enough. There are two problems. 

One, a damson tree, a Shropshire Prune, that has never done well. It has leaf curl aphid beyond anything I have ever seen before, and it gets it every season, all season. It looks dreadful and is clearly unhappy. I don't like to spray but organic tree wash doesn't seem to shift anything. The tree is going. Even once I have decided, I can't help but wail and shut my eyes when the axe makes its first chop.