The weather has been a bit odd recently. The days have started off fairly cool in the mornings. It usually starts to warm up after lunch, but the temperature peaks at around 6pm.

I shouldn't complain. At least it's getting warmer now it's supposed to be summer.

The English Heritage Festival of History covers 2000 years of British history. Most of the displays are military, probably because it leads to a more dramatic show.

In addition to the big displays, there was a historic market where you could buy traditional clothing, games, tableware.

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I don't think the garlic farmers need to start worrying yet. We cooked with the home grown garlic today. The cloves were very small - I'm sure the whole bulb was smaller than the clove I planted last year.

The garlic itself smelt reasonably pungent - not quite as 'garlicky' as the Tesco Organic garlic (which has a much better 'fresh garlic' smell than their normal stuff).

Seen in a shop at a motorway service station on the M1:

We've got a new roborovski hamster, to replace Alysia (aka Big Silly), who died on saturday, aged 2½.

We haven't decided on a name yet. She's been living with Ruby (aka Babykin) for a day now and they've been getting along well so far.

Last year I planted some garlic cloves. They weren't bought to grow, they were just ones from the kitchen which had started to sprout. They are supposed to be ready to harvest once the stalks have started to dry. I noticed that they had dried and withered this morning so I decided to harvest them.

The bulbs seem a little small and only seem to consist of a couple of small cloves each.

Apparently the best time to plant garlic is the autumn, so I'll be giving it another go later in the year.

We were away at the weekend, up north to a friends wedding. The drive up was terrible - the M6 was a slow crawl nearly all the way from Birmingham up to Junction 17, where the motorway was closed due to an accident.

We stopped at Stafford Services on the way, and had a walk by the lake.

The wedding went well. Despite all the rain, it stayed dry for the photos after the service. The reception was held in a marquee at the groom's parent's farm. We were supposed to be camping in a nearby field overnight but we had to delay pitching out tent thanks to the non-stop rain this morning. We managed to get the tent erected in the afternoon but it needed both of us - one to stop the tent blowing away while the other pushed the tent pegs into the ground.

We obtained some Bobwhite Quail last weekend. During the week we built another quail run for them to live in - this means we've lost even more of the garden now. If we want to sit out, there's a small area between the quail and the vegetables.

The bobwhites make an interesting sound - they sometimes sound like an old shortwave radio being tuned in.

Or How I Wish I'd Labelled The Pots...

Our vegetable garden is doing reasonably well now. We've been eating the salad leaves for a few weeks now, and we've eaten one courgette so far - there are a couple more which are almost big enough to eat now.

I had to dig up one of the rocket plants which was growing next to the pepper plants. It had grown too large and was overshadowing its neighbours. We ate it last night as a 'salad garnish' to our home-made pizza.

The only real problem is the new tubs I planted a few weeks ago. They contained Leeks, Chives and 'Land Cress' but I can't remember which one was which. One tub has something with small broad leaves, which may be cress but could also be a weed. Several tubs have small thin green shoots. One should be chives and another should be leeks, but they look identical. They both look identical to the smaller tub which is definitely chives. I suppose they are all members of the allium family so they might look similar when they are small.

Flowers now - last year we bought some small Viola plants. At the end of the season I collected the seeds and scattered them in some tubs to see what happened. We have one small viola plant which looks identical to the ones we bought. This is actually growing in the gaps between the flagstones. The only plants which grew in the tubs were tall, spindly with pink flowers.

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We visited a couple more National Trust houses today. We went around Chedworth House and the church, then drove to Waddesdon House. We didn't realise there was some kind of festival going on at Waddesdon but we managed to have a quick wander around the gardens.

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Here are some photos of the new quail chicks which have hatched within the last day

Quail Chick

Tray full of quail chicks. The blue wire is a temperature sensor so we can make sure they aren't getting too warm or cold. The silver object on the right is the heat lamp to keep the temperature at around 37°C

It's quite windy today - on the drive back from the shops this morning, I saw some cardboard boxes get blown out of a skip.

In our garden we've got a small lavender bush in a tub. The roots have started to grow out of the drainage holes in the bottom of the tub. This makes it unsteady and it gets blown over quite easily.

I've been meaning to plant it in the garden for a while and decided to finally get around to doing it today. I unlocked the shed door to get the spade, turned around and saw the lavender pot get blown over again. It's definitely time to re-plant it.

Just a quick post today with some updated hamster news.

Vande died earlier today. When we adopted him and his brother last summer, Vande was the larger of the two and Graaff was noticeably thinner. Over time, Vande got thinner and started to drink a lot. We think he may have developed diabetes, which can be common in Campbells Hamsters. So far Graaff seems to be ok.

We lost Hank last month, on the 29th. He had gone quite quickly from being a chubby animal to being quite thin. He had developed a series of tumours which over the months slowly grew and spread. We took him to the vets when they started to appear and he was given some antibiotics. While he was able to live a normal life, without being in any pain, it seemed cruel to have him put down. We were told that an operation would be very risky. Operations on small hamsters have a very low success rate. We looked after as well as we could. He died in his sleep, overnight.

A few years ago we went to an event organised by Lidl to drum up support for a store in Binley. The planning application failed but they recently bought the old Somerfield site on the Binley Road in Stoke.

The last time we drove past, a few weeks ago, the site was still looking empty. There didn't seem to be anything above ground level. We drove past this evening and the building work seemed to have progressed quite well. The brick shell was in place and it looked very 'shop shaped'.

It was a toss-up between the lunchtime buffet at China Red in Hertford Street, or the Handy Nasty (Han Dynasty) near West Orchards. We chose China Red simply because we were nearer to it at the time.

The buffet was fairly cheap at £5.90-ish. The selection was reasonable given the price. Starters included prawn toast, chicken satay sticks, ribs, spring rolls. Main courses included beef curry, sweet and sour chicken, noodles, rice.

The food was tasty, but the disadvantage of eating at lunchtime is that I can't eat as much as in the evenings, so I didn't get to have as many platesful as normal.