Wednesday

 Morning.  It's a fully old start to the day.  It feels coolish but it's humid (I think) and it's very dull.  We are forecast a few light showers but if they're anything like yesterday's 'showers' we will have afternoon sunshine.

One of my commenters (thank you so much) identified the apple problem as something called bitter pit.  I've looked it up and on the RHS site it says:

Correct feeding and watering to maintain steady growth throughout the growing season is the key to reducing problems with bitter pit. Foliar sprays of calcium nitrate can be applied from mid-June to mid-September to increase the concentration of calcium within the developing apples.

Ooops.  I never knew you feed fruit trees.  Better get some calcium nitrate and a bigger sprayer thingy - I just have those little spray bottles that double for spraying water on ironing.

Yesterday, tuition was most enjoyable, I had a nice chat over coffee with Beth, although not as long as expected because something had come up and she needed to get back on the laptop to deal with it.

On the way home I took a little diversion (genuinely - just down a country lane off my route) to Grenville's Nursery.
For the last few weeks, I have been muttering about taking a look around to see if any garden centres still have yellow courgette plants.  Some of you may remember that I grew some from seed, planted them at the allotment and the next day they had gone.  Not died, just gone, with neat little holes left where they should be.  Very odd.  The two spares that Beth took back to hers are still alive and one is doing extremely well.  Not the same as having them at the allotment though; we ALWAYS have yellow courgettes at the allotment!
All this was before I had to drop tools and go to Dad's so a while ago now.
Anyway, I took that diversion yesterday.  Grenville's is a proper nursery.  No cards, soap, food, perfume, clothes, etc, just garden and allotment equipment and thousands and thousands of quality plants at competitive prices.
I was so lucky - they did have yellow courgettes.  Obviously, they had grown, they had long stems (they are trailers) with dead leaves lower down but at the end of the stems they were very healthy with good sized leaves and, in some cases, mature fruit.  I didn't get any with actual fruit but I found three with both male and female flowers and healthy leaves growing.  
Their bedding plants are £1.20 or five for a fiver so I looked around and bought two chilli peppers, gusto purple, to make up the five because - why not?  These also had some fruit but the two I chose also had plenty of flowers, buds and healthy looking leaves.   They can go where I've just cleared the broad beans and I'll probably put them in today after harvesting the mature chillies.

So, in the afternoon, I drove to the allotment and got the three courgettes planted with some water retaining gel crystals and slow release fertiliser pellets, watering them in well.
I hope I did it right - I dug comparatively big holes and buried the stems right up to where the leaves started in the hopes that they work like tomatoes and develop roots on the buried stems.  Fingers crossed.
They'd better still be there when I go down this afternoon, that's all I can say.
Stupidly, I left both camera and phone at home so will take a few photos today instead

I came home with six raspberries in my tum and a very happy feeling.

Today is a busy one.
First I have the second tuition session of this week.
Then it's home for breakfast before I go to Lindsey's for personal training
Then I whizz back because the lovely Sharon comes to tame my hair.  This should have been last Tuesday but it was Dad's funeral
Finally, I will be down the allotment to talk to the courgettes, weed and generally potter happily around.

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  I hope yours is also just what you would choose it to be.  Stay well, stay safe and be happy.  xx