Our garden's coming along nicely now. We've had about 4 strawberries off our strawberry pot, with a few small ones just turning red now. We've had a handful of early raspberries, the bulk will come in early autumn. We have around 20-30 different types of lettuce and rocket growing steadily, the tomatoes and pepper plants are growing happily too. And our first potato plant has started flowering, so once those flowers die we can try digging up some potatoes.

However yesterday I noticed a cat in the garden. Now I'm not a big fan of cats, besides my brother's and a friend's, both of which are just big and lazy and do what they're told. However this cat was presumably from next door as I know they have a cat and a kitten, and perhaps this cat was theirs too. Right now my garden is my hard work and effort and the last thing I want is a cat walking over it. So I chased the cat out the garden (actually I glared at it through the window and it ran) and thought nothing more. But then yesterday afternoon we went out to water the ground in the hot sun to get into the plant roots, and I noticed a lot of flies buzzing around the centre of the patch. Then a smell hit me, a smell left only by a cat. Bloody cats leaving their mess in our garden!! So trying not to gag from the smell I managed to dig it all up and dispose of it. However I'm not impressed. The flies that were landing on it were also landing on our plants – and they say cats are clean creatures, sorry I don't think that's very clean.

So after a mention to my Mum this morning she's told me to use orange peel around the plants as the cats don't like the smell. Luckily I've got a stack of old oranges that I've not used or come to through out, so I've peeled a few and put them around the plants. Let's hope it works as i don't want to feel like I should have to throw away my hard work on growing plants because of flies and cats.

We've also had an attack of snails. They're still trying to attack the flowers I put down by the hedge. A few of the flowers are fighting back and regrowing leaves but the central ones are just dying off. I think I'm going to have to dig up the ones that are surviving and dump the others, then just put some pots up there, but surely flowers in pots will still get attacked? Still, at least we have a large box of slug pellets. I think we've so far killed off 100+ snails!

This heat isn't helping the plants much. I'm watering them in the morning, afternoon and evening. We've had no rain here at all. There are reports of floods all over, but we're not seeing any rain at all. Not that I'm too concerned. Providing the plants get watered and don't dry out I'm happy. The sun is good for the plants and it also means I can get my washing done and hung out! However a nice downpour at night would maybe cool things down a little.