Ow - digging's painful!!

Jamie dug a bit of the new plot during the week and that's what we were doing for a few hours today - really forget how painful digging is!! We're concentrating on digging an area where we'll plant the celeriac.

Angle Shades moth pupa

The weeds are up to our knees and include grass (couch mostly), nettles, docks, margolds, groundsel and others which I'm not sure of yet. Some have terribly long roots. Oh yes, and the previous tenant's potatoes are doing pretty well for the second year - though they're too blighty to eat :-)
It's a haven for wildlife - particularly beetles, slugs and worms. There are masses of ladybirds around at the moment, but not any aphids for them to eat at present. We also found lots of pupae - mostly Angle Shades moth ones but also smaller ones.... 

Waiting to eat our veg before us!

Beautiful ground beetle

A shiny beetle with mites

Oh, I did plant out the sweet peas - 22 of the seeds germinated and didn't get eaten by slugs. They're looking happy so to keep them that way I surrounded them with mesh. Pigeons love peas, I don't know if sweet peas taste the same but I don't want them to get wiped out before they can afford to lose a few leaves!