No Veg. No Way.

 I made a solemn oath to myself that gardening this year would involve growing flowers and herbs only, and working on the space in front of Darling Buds. And that was all. No vegetables. None at all. They are far too time consuming, especially if rain is thin on ground like it was last year. The fruit aspect of the garden is fine, because the apples, plums, damsons, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants are pretty self-sufficient and not in my face all the growing season. They just get on with doing their thing with minimal input from me, which is excellent from a time and motion point of view.

Currently, in the greenhouse, then, I have:

Tomatoes (cherry, beefsteak and plum)

Cucumbers

Squash

Courgettes

Beetroot

French beans

Mixed salad leaves

Okay, I know that strictly speaking some of the above are, in horticultural terms, fruit, but for the purpose of my 'No Veg 2026' oath, they fall in the vegetable category, and I am jolly annoyed with myself. Sigh...

Yesterday, I started working on the area in front of 'Darling Buds’ pictured above. I say 'working', but what I really mean is that I spread out all the cardboard I had at my disposal and weighed it down with all the odds and sods of bricks I could find. This is in order to suppress the grass so I can dig it up with the least amount of resistance. Once the grass is gone, firstly I shan't have to mow it EVER again (hurrah!) and secondly, I shall be attempting to dig up and flatten the whole area which I am not looking forward to at all. The biggest issue is the area where I made the first raised bed when we moved here. The outline, the lump of it, is still evident, looking like some sort of burial mound. It's a sod to push the mower over, that's for sure. It definitely needs flattening in line with the rest of the area. 

Anyway, murder the grass first, think about flattening techniques when the time comes. 

 And then I sat in the  cardboard space - I had to adjust some of the cardboard because Nell has no consideration about where she runs and what she destroys in the process - and I tried to visualise what the space would look like. The ideas that immediately came to mind were Tudor knot garden and Zen maze. I can't see either of these visions being practical or workable but I haven't discarded them completely. I am sure a vision will come to me eventually. 

Finally, I received a non-committal response from Morrison’s regarding my toilet roll feedback to their Customer Services department. It began by addressing me as ‘Mr…’

That didn’t go down well…sigh (again)…