Back in the UK after our trip to California. What am I missing apart from the family? The light: almost constant blue skies seemed unreal out there. Warm days and sunshine for days on end and in November. I believe it has rained since we left but we saw not a drop.

My next job, once we’d been through the “glamour of flying” is to get back on the allotment and sort out a delivery of super delicious soil conditioner ordered for quite a few plotters, me amongst them. This black gold makes for easy growing when the time comes to plant. A huge pile of the stuff for my plot and it’s still warm! Its made, I am told, from household food waste somewhere in the Evesham area and it has proved brilliant in the past and goes well with the clay soil we have on the allotment.

It goes through a rigorous process so is also very clean and stable, easy to handle and has a very pleasant smell. I’d rather use it than farmyard manure, and there’s no better job to get you back into the swing of things than a morning’s light shovelling and spreading on the plot. The plot pictured below is not mine, mine is not quite as smart as this one. This is Steve’s plot where they dumped my load of stuff for me to sort out later.

Makes a change from the beach.

So what to write about from here?

Before I went to LA I’d gathered together a load of my favourite images from over the years and I’ll be publishing them. I hope you enjoy them, but for the time being here’s a selection of the L A images to remind you of sunshine and signs.