Into each life a little rain must fall

'Who'd be a gardener!' said Mr E on the phone this morning.

If I had webbed feet the last week would not have been too much trouble, but I haven't and it has.

This morning it continued to rain so that the new week would begin behind and therefore muck up a new customer starting Wednesday. She may be Friday now.

But as bad as the rainy days that put paid to lawns and hedges were the last two weekends, including a bank holiday, with scarcely a gap in the deluge to get to the allotment.

In May and June I regret having an allotment. I know that while I am not there the weeds are reaching for the sky and the most recently weeded beds have a new covering of tiny weeds. The bindweed is flexing its muscles and entwining the potatoes and beans. Meanwhile, with the weeds to give them cover, slugs and snails are rampaging in the warmth and wet, chomping through the peas and broadbeans, sugar snaps and spring cabbages.

I become almost afraid to go there, knowing that an hour spent weeding will make hardly any impression and an hour spent planting out leeks (why did I sow so many?) is an hour not weeding. It becomes another pressure and chore instead of the wonderful escape it normally is.

This time last year the squashes and courgettes, cucumbers and aubergines were already planted out. When almost the only time to get there is the weekend and it rains.. and then I take a day off in the week and - guess what? - it becomes hard not to take it personally.

I keep peering at the parsnip bed and the swede bed. Nothing but weeds. After a month do I give up and resow? When do I decide that they are never going to come up? I know that parsnips can be temperamental. I sow Nigella in the row, but so far only the ferny heads of the Nigella (Love-in-a-mist) are showing. Not a parsnip. Not a swede.

I need a good few hours of weeding to get the upper hand again, some time to plant, ideally a helper and time to rekindle my love of my allotment.

I shall contemplate some photos, remind myself how much I have done so far, and remember that in a month or so there should be little to do there but harvest, with all the beds planted and everything growing.

But the garlic has rust and I feel I may be going the same way myself.