hot on the heels of my last post about a wet weekend, we get a Bank Holiday Monday where not only did it pour doen, but it was so so cold as well. And at the end of May as well.

But nothing that a bit of retail theray couldn’t improve, and so a couple of hours in the garden centre (with two coffee stops to warm the cockles), and about £150 later, we have a car full of plants.

Of course it is far too wet to think about planting them, but they look good placed strategically around the beds. Perhaps we will get to them later in the week.

Well it certainly rained this weekend, and whilst the garden generally and the grass in partcular has benefited, it meant that nothing got done outside. Plans for a weekend of progress, and a BBQ or two were hastily shelved but not in time to save the BBQ from a soaking.

And now, after the unseasonably hot spell, everything is really starting to take off, so the lawn needs mowing, our miniature hedges need clipping back into shape, and the beds need weeding.

All the blossom has been blasted from the trees by the rain and everything looks a soggy mess, just crying out for some attention.

I am ashamed to say that the majority of our vegetable seeds remain unsown this year, for no other reason than lack of time. Or rather that the available time we have is sucked up in other ventures.

And whilst we have some lettuce sown, that remains about the sum total, the balance waiting and rattling about in their unopened seed packets.

On the agenda for the coming weekend is the planting of as many seeds as we possibly can, including sweetcorn, chilli peppers, more lettuce (for a successional crop), and dwarf beans. Progress report to follow!

I love compost.

I love the freeness of it.

I love the wholeness of the process.

I love that you can put waste in the top and get out a useful, productive, product at the bottom.

And now I have emptied the last of last years fully decomposed compost and bagged it ready to go on the various beds, and turned what is left, ready to start the cycle all over again.

What could be more lovely than that?

Our tulips, so proudly planted out by our eldest, that I have previously talked about, have been reduced somewhat in stature, by her younger brother. This is his first real season of realizing he can pick flowers, and does not need to simply look at them, or caress their petals in the slightly clumsy way he did last year, at the age of just about one. 

So, when he saw another young lad, old enough to know that some flowers (weeds) are acceptable picking fodder, who was visiting, pick a dandelion and dutifully present it to his mother, ours of course had to make a grab for something bigger and better than a dandelion to present to his mum.

And so the bright red tulips are now lacking more of their number, and we have a rather mangled tulip in a glass of water on the patio table.