Nervous return to the garden after flood alerts on holiday

I came back from holiday somewhat nervous. The Environment Agency had been sending me flood alerts while we were away abroad and I knew it had been bucketing it down and probably regularly temporarily flooding the garden. I was convinced I was going to come back to devastation, mildew and rot. But no. I came back to a green and verdant garden, with huge, healthy, bushy tomatoes, tall peas and sweetcorn, but a continuing failure for anything except weeds to grow up the far end by the shed. This is what it looked like after I spent all morning tidying it up:

And this is what it look like au naturel before I tackled the weeds and my other half dealt with the lawn:

The huge tuft of grass in the middle is from where an animal crept into the accidentally unlocked shed one night, pulled out a plastic packet of fertiliser and tore it open over that spot.

If nothing else, it's really convinced me of the value of fertiliser.
Before I went on holiday I decided to use shredded paper as a mulch around the strawberries (instead of straw) to protect them from the soil, as I didn't think the cardboard I'd already put down was doing a good enough job. I think it was only partially successful. I came back from holiday to a load of strawberries completely covered with a powdery mould, so I removed all of those. But I was left with a large number of red and delicious strawberries.

My apples are also growing well.

Flooding in the garden and a strawberry plant in a pot

There has been a tiny bit of flooding in the garden. It's been raining so hard in the latest summer storms that the garden isn't able to absorb all the water as it falls and temporarily floods. The water then drains once it stops raining. All the plants are surviving it fine so far, although I'm getting an even larger proliferation of ants than usual. Perhaps they like an aquatic environment.

Also, I put one of my strawberry plants in a pot with the thought that I could use it as a gift.

I originally put it in when it just had flowers and leaves on it. The leaves drooped almost immediately, so I took about half of the flowers off so that it didn't need to spend so much energy on them. It survived fine after a few days of leaf droop (so repot a week before you want to give it away) and is now happily producing strawberries. I had the basket from a plant someone gave me (that didn't survive the position I put it in). The strawberries have been particularly good because the flowers seem not to cause us any allergies.

First strawberry of the season

I think this is the tastiest thing I have ever grown in my garden. We've only had one so far, but I'm hopeful that more will ripen soon.

More of them are looking like they're beginning to turn red.

This first one was even the perfect shape, although others look less symmetrical.

In fact, the garden's generally looking pretty healthy at the moment.