mrs hope was in hospital yesterday and last night for a wee operation. thanks to God, it went very well by all accounts, and although the feeling in her right leg didn't return until 4am today, she is now resting and recuperating at home.

two of our giant russian sunflowers have finally opened their faces to the world; the garden is now happily nodded at from a very great height. our tomatoes are ripening and our runner beans are going nuts - not long until our sweetcorn ripen and we gorge ourselves on that. which reminds me: my wife and i were taking the air on sunday evening and wandered down to the local allotments (it is the route mrs hope walks in to work). we saw an old fellow with two bags of produce from his patch, and i, spotting that he had sweetcorn in them, asked him how he knew they were ripe for harvesting. he didn't explain exactly, but happily showed us how ripe they were and insisted we take two of them to see for ourselves. so we had sweetcorn for tea on sunday, roasted in our chim. nice, eh?