It’s about time I harvested this lettuce but the hot weather is preventing me from doing it at the moment.
If the leaves are left alone for now they help cover the soil and prevent the sun from drying the ground 
Salads have fairly shallow roots and therefore suffer from drought sooner than crops such as potatoes and parsnips which have deep roots that reach the moisture deep in the ground!
When ready, I harvest the outer leaves only not the whole plant so that I have a succession of crops.
The purple loosestrife (actually the pink and not purple flower 
in the left corner) has just bloomed and is attracting all kinds of pollinators 
