If you have a few hours to spare either on your own or with your kids what do you enjoy doing the most?
For me (or, I should say, us) it is spending as much time outside as possible. I have always enjoyed walking and pottering in the garden. Some of my earliest and happiest memories are of my mum and I in the greenhouse, growing cucumbers, tomatoes and salads when I was a little girl. Thirty years on and I still love it.
I certainly don’t profess to be an horticultural expert but I adore the process of selecting seeds, dusting down the piles of plastic pots that sit underneath my potting bench, filling them with compost, sowing and growing.
The weather in April put paid to doing anything in the garden but dash across it in to the dry and relative warmth of the potting shed. Last year Jack was too small to enjoy the delights of a bag of warm potting compost but this year he is all over it. Give him a pot and a trowel and he can create a mess made of compost like no one else. He has an old chair pushed right up to the bench where he can team and ladle the dirt from one pot to another. The potting shed is my retreat when I want five minutes of solitude with a cup of tea, it is his when I get the lawn mower out.
Two weeks ago, on a very grey day, I treated the lawn to some weed and feed. The weed part was to try to rid it of the colourful carpet of dandelions that have happily taken root, the feed part was to try to coax the lawn to have at least a little bit of grass on it. I am tempted from time to time to start lifting the lawn bit by bit, lay some rugged brick paths and begin filling it in with lots of different plants to create an intertwined vegetable and flower garden; but then I feel I shouldn’t. I need something to mow.
One afternoon in April, while the rain was pouring outside, Jack and I spent an hour in the potting shed sowing courgette, peas, sunflowers and tomatoes. Weeks later they are thriving and this afternoon we potted the peas out against willow frames in two raised beds to the left of the lawn in a sunny spot. The courgettes have been transplanted in to a terracotta pot on the path in front of the shed where they can bask in the sunshine in the mornings before being treated to a little bit of shade in the afternoon. I have learned from experience to only plant one or two courgette plants as they produce such a prolific crop if looked after properly that more than that and we just can’t eat them quick enough. The tomatoes will stay in the shed, on the bench behind the glass where they will stay warm and grow luscious, round, red fruits.
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