I have been (and am continuing) working like a complete madwoman. So this is just a quickie.Beavering away, chained to a laptop is not so bad when it’s a bit dull and dreary as it has been over the past week or so. But when it’s a glorious day like today - not too hot, fresh breeze, scattered clouds in an otherwise brilliantly blue sky - it’s really rotten. I could sit in my conservatory and work, but it gets really hot and I can’t see the screen properly. Believe me, I try and after a while have to give up and retreat into the darker depths of the house.

So to cheer myself up in a brief interlude after my lunch (hastily gobbled cheese baguette), I’ve decided to do a little list. I love lists.

5 Things I Love About Summer

1. Flowers. This is glaringly obvious, but when you think to some of the dreariness of winter (if, like me you’re yet to grapple with the skill of seasonal planting for colour), the riot of colour bursting forth everywhere is a joy. I think it really does make you feel more cheerful.

2. Bees, Moths and Butterflies. OK, glaring obvious again and linked to flowers, but these guys are not only beautiful and fun to watch, they’re also vital to THE SURVIVAL OF ALL MANKIND. Not completely vital, but they do play a heck of an important role in pollinating many of the foods that we rely on. As do other pollinators, but butterflies, moths and bees are pretty too. So pay homage to these wee beasties and plant lots of pollen and nectar-rich flowers and shrubs: buddleia, echinachea, foxgloves, verbena bonariensis, cosmos, sedum, lavender, borage - in fact, any flowering herb - and achillea are just the tip of the iceberg.

3. Eating my Own Veg. If you read this blog regularly (and if you do, thank you SO much) you may know that when it comes to seasonal veg growing, I’m rubbish. I just don’t pull my thumb out. I make charts and diagrams and all sorts, and then don’t take action. So most of my veg is produced during the late spring, summer and into the late autumn. Around this time of year in summer I am enjoying the fruits of my (limited) labour. There’s just no comparison to food that’s done food metres and not food miles. And yes, you do feel a bit smug when you tell everyone about how you made the most delicious meal with your own home-grown veggies and fruit.

4. Lots of Sunlight. Well yes - we get more sunlight in summer, everybody knows that. But although I’m not adverse to winter evening tucked in front of the fire with a blanket and flanked by a few cats, I do enjoy the extra energy and vitality that the extra hours of sunshine bring. I feel better, and I think I look better. I have quite pale skin, and in winter sometimes I can look a bit like the walking dead. Summer brings a glow to my skin, and I’m pretty sure I can feel the extra benefits of increased Vit D production. Also, having the extra time to work later into the evenings is a blessing.

5. Being Able to Visit Lots of Places. In the summer, if you want to visit somewhere or just go out, you don’t have to contend with wrapping yourself in sixteen layers to make sure you don’t feel uncomfortably cold (unless of course you live in London, where my friend Ben assures me you can walk around in a t-shirt all year round). I, probably like most females, feel the cold very easily and I become a grumpy, whinging lump if I’m forced to be outside when I’m feeling cold. So trips out can be a trial for Rich if I’m not happy about being there. In summer though, it’s more of a delight. Visiting parks, gardens, the beach, your local cafe - it all seems so much more carefree and easy doesn’t it?

I’m all about balance, so here’s another list:

5 Things I Don’t Like About Summer

1. Flies. I won’t use the word hate, but I intensely dislike flies. In summer, they’re everywhere - hovering around chicken poo pretty much as soon as they plop it out, scavenging around any microbe of cat food that’s left in the food bowl seconds after the cats have moved away, buzzing around my bin (especially since ruddy Council has switched to bi-monthly bin collections) and laying mangy maggots in it. YUCK! They’re just the most irritating thing about summer. And the worst part is that they can cause real damage in the form of flystrike. Pattie has been unwell lately, and her botty gets a bit messy. No sooner do we give her rear end a wash and blow dry, she squits another one out and messes the area up again. The other night we’d checked her bum whilst she was dozing in the nestbox. By mid morning the next day I was horrified to find she had flystrike and the maggots had hatched and were causing blood and general havoc. Pleased to say we got it cleared up, but it can really happen that fast - they only need around 12 hours to hatch and start feeding, so check your animals at least twice a day - particularly rabbits and chickens. Hedgehogs often fall foul of flystrike too. If you see one with fly eggs or a wound get it to a wildlife hospital or to your local vet quick sharp.

2. Heat Waves. I’m probably even more rubbish on intensely hot days than I am in the deep depths of winter. When I get too hot I get a massive throbbing headache, and everything seems to take thrice the amount of effort. So on really hot days where the temperature approaches or breaks the 30 degrees celcius mark, I simply lock myself away in our cool house and wait for it to be over. Of course, I have to tend to the animals as well and make sure they’re comfortable. The chooks hate hot weather and retreat to the back and side of the shed, were it’s perpetually shaded and cool. The rabbit house and most of the run is always in the shade as they’re not sun worshippers at all. They also have milk bottles filled with water that have been frozen in the fridge. They like to lie next to or on top of them until it’s cool enough to start hopping about again.

3. Ice Cream Van Jingles. I think our ice cream van men are in the midst of a turf war. From about Feb To Oct each year we are subjected to the incessant jingle jangle of ice cream van Muzak. I wouldn’t complain if it was once every now and then, but wherever they go, it seems to resonate around the whole town. So you end up with ‘Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside/Camptown Races/English Country Garden’ etc. going round and round in your head for days afterwards.

4. Dawn Choruses. Well, I don’t dislike them entirely. They are spectacular. But when you’ve been working late and you’re awoken by an overzealous blackbird, sparrows that must have little megaphones and booming woodpigeons, sometimes it can grow a little thin. And why is it that just as you’re dropping off…they start all over again!

5. Early mornings. Sort of in line with dawn choruses. If I wasn’t magnificently tired in the mornings, I would love them. In principle, I do. Dewy grass, blue skies, the quiet and calm (apart from dawn chorus). But in reality, in the throes of summer I have to drag myself out of bed between 5:00 - 5:45am to let chookies out. If we leave them too long, they start making alarm calls and shouting from inside the henhouse. Bunbuns come out then too. Cats are usually climbing over me to wake me up for breakfast. Rich and I take turns to get up, but sometimes you can’t help but long for the relatively later mornings in winter when you can have a lie in until gone 7.

How about you?

NB: Was supposed to be a quick blog entry. Somehow it’s turned into a mammoth post. Best get back to work now…

I am knackered. My sleep is going haywire and it’s been taking it’s toll on me.

And this post is a bit of a show and tell!

Yesterday though, I actually *finally* managed to get down to the allotment. Thankfully Mum had been down two or three times since my last visit, and it wasn’t in too bad shape. I weeded around the onions (because as all onion growers know, it’s vital to keep them weed free), hoed between the potatoes and started reeling in the blankets of chickweed that were threatening military dictatorship of my plot.

I was met by another nice surprise - we have a raised asparagus plot on our allotment. We snapped a bit off but it was tough as old boots and some stalks had already gone to seed, but nice to know for future reference. I already have a tonne of asparagus growing here at the Smallest Smallholding in the flower borders, but I let it go to seed because it’s so striking. Speaking of going to seed, the rhubarb had grown about 3ft since I last saw it, and was starting to flower. I pulled out the biggest leaves from the base in the vague hope that I’ll still be able to harvest some of the more tender rhubarb in the coming weeks…

All is going ok here. I’m still horribly behind with my sowing - sweet peas are so late now that they’re going to have to be sowed directly and I’ll hope for the best. I’ve saved some old squash bottles and cut them in half to make mini cloches, to try and protect the growing sweet peas from the clutches of enquiring hen beaks. The broad beans are coming along nicely though, despite also being about three months late. Cabbages - Primo and Kilaxy - are both coming along nice and despite being left outside in their seed modules have evaded the beady eyes of the woodpigeons.

My super duper early Tendersnax carrots are actually coming along quite nicely in the pots. I’ve been pricking them out two or three times a week, but I’m still sure I’ll only end up with enough carrots for about 2 meals. My directly sown early Nantes (I think? Still yet to put in labels) carrots are pushing through. They’ll be a bit of an experiment this year as I haven’t put ANYTHING of nutritional value into the soil yet. I might try and feed them as I go along…bit cobbled together but that’s just the way I seem to work at the moment. The tomatoes are going great guns in the conservatory, aubergines are coming along VERY nicely, and my other mystery seed trays are doing ok. The lavender and rosemary cuttings have been a bit of a disaster though, I think I neglected to water them enough and now I only have one surviving specimen of each.

The rabbits - or The BunBuns as they will be know as from hereonin - are getting through a bag of curly kale every day. So I think it’s time that I hunted down a packet of seeds and started to try and opt for the cheaper option of growing my own. Thing is, it probably won’t be ready until late autumn/winter. Oh well. There’s always next year. Trouble is, I am starting to run out of space, so I’m going to have to dig out yet another veg plot here. I haven’t even got around to finishing digging the other one yet. Hence why no parsnips or sweetcorn in the ground. Oh heck - HELLLLLLLLLLLLLP! My uncle has a turf spade which may help my plight, but it’s the digging out of the rubble (I still shake my fists at the builder that thought it was a good idea to bury it) that takes an age.

So on the agenda for next week (and yes, it’s late, I’m working at Lucy speed):

• Finally sow sweet peas direct (wildlife magnets)
• Sow sweetcorn in trays
• Sow butternut squashes (might try grow bags even though I intensely dislike them)
• Think about growing parsnips (and actually sow if have space)
• Get the last of the blasted potatoes in at SS (and enjoy very late crops of early and maincrop potatoes)
• Put in a few remaining onion sets (my version of successive sowing/growing)
• Get down the allotment and Weed for Britain

I think I need a new motto - “Better Late Than Never”

More pissy weather this week then. Hasn’t exactly been conducive to a lot of work. I haven’t been near the allotment for ages and I fear that Mr Mole has wreaked havoc with my onion sets and potatoes. Oh well, I never was really that bothered about planting in straight lines.

Urgh, the chicken saga continues. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually spinning around on some level of Dante’s spiral of Hell and damnation when it comes to grappling with sick hens. Oh of course, I’m being melodramatic. They seem ‘ok’ today - Yoko is in better spirits, having had a really good day on Monday, and then a couple of crap days. I think the breakthrough in sunshine today is helping. She has one or two days of baytril left, then we have to assess. She could be going in for a bit of a risky procedure to try and drain off some of the egg yolk in her abdomen.

Pattie laid a tiny ‘wind egg’ (a bit of egg white, aka albumen, no yolk laid in a shell about the size of a large grape) three days ago and hasn’t laid since. Apparently wind eggs (also known as cock eggs, since people once thought cockerels laid them, and fart eggs - can’t answer that one) are fairly common. But the problem is that Pattie hasn’t laid since. I have read that it can be something to do with coming to the end of a ’strain’ of eggs, and that it may take them a few days to get going again. But Pattie refuses to perch at night. Before Yoko comes in, she makes a beeline for the nest box, intending to settle down for the night. Cue the big bad Yoko who, thanks to her sterile EYP, needs the nestbox, Pattie is pushed out. At the moment Pattie is refusing to perch, which is worrying.

More worrying!

I had the rabbits out and about the other day. The hens were not too pleased, as they spied the rabbits charging about. Yoko assumed a rugby-type stance before pecking Smudge on the head for getting too close (I think Smudge was just coming up to investigate), and when Smudge did an about-turn and charged off, she was met by Maureen and Pattie. Pattie flapped her wings and both she and Maureen jumped on the poor wabbit. Chickens are so vicious sometimes. There’s no way I’d leave them out there unsupervised together. Smudge was fine though, I think she was just having fun running around under the hedges. She and Snoopy were doing lots of investigating.

I also brought them in last night to meet two of my cats. The other two live upstairs, they’ve sort of paired off and have their own private routes in and out of the house. Tortoise and Tom, the downstairs cats, weren’t too sure about bunnies charging around the living room. Tortoise is a moody mare sometimes, and she got in a right huff and grumbled as she waltzed off to the kitchen. I swear she was pouting. Tom is a lovely scallywag, totally in awe of Tortoise, sometimes nothing else in the world matters. He can be a bit dim and scatty, and didn’t seem bothered by the rabbits. Not even when Snoop worked out a route up onto the back of the sofa. Eventually they all settled down together, and by 11pm everyone was crashed out in the living room.

Right. Enough about animals.

SEEDS.

It’s going well!

My early Snowball Turnips have come up trumps - they’ve germinated really quickly under the fleece tunnel, so I’ll be pricking them out very shortly. Aubergines are going really well, although a couple withered and died in the seed tray. Peppers popped their heads out of the soil a few days ago, and the tomatoes are going great guns.

My rosemary and lavender cuttings are also establishing themselves, although the rosemary seems to be doing much better. I might try and take larger cuttings of the lavender, and give it another try. i sowed trays of Cosmos too. Last year the flowers lasted right into November, when the bees were still out. They are fantastic for colour, height and most importantly, attracting and providing food for bees. The bees and butterflies could not get enough of them last year. I thoroughly recommend them. Try growing them in seed modules, transplanting to large plots (about 2 or 3 per pot). Wait until they’re fairly well established and quite meaty in the stems, and then plant them out. I did this last year and they were poker straight, strong and lasted for months.

The Tendersnax carrots are doing well in the pots, but my seed scattering skills are not exactly desirable. I sowed most of them in a big cluster in the middle. I think by the time I’ve pricked them all out, I’ll have about 5 carrots per pot. Not exactly a veritable success. I’m still undecided about growing carrots in pots. I don’t think I would recommend it, unless the pot is massive, and unlike me, you are actually able to sow thinly.I suppose you could just harvest tender baby carrots instead. I might try that.

Garlic and super early onions are doing ok too, although the super early onion sets were put in late, so should really be described as fashionably late.

Oh, and I have still neglected to label anything I have sown. I’m too lazy to find a pencil or a waterproof pen. So I am relying on my somewhat currently patchy memory to recall what is what and where.

I try not to kill anything. I don’t swot flies, I try to not provide ants with ideal nesting sites, and with 4 cats on site, mice don’t tend to make themselves known. I am with Chris Packham on this one - live and let live. Which means that things like aphids can become a real problem. I don’t like to use the word pest, because I suppose in some cases, one person’s pest is another beast’s fodder. Or something.

I suppose the answer to successfully growing vegetables and wildlife planting without using standard pest control is to implement and encourage natural predators. Ok, so this is me passing the buck and getting other wildlife to do my dirty work, but I think it’s the lesser of two evils. It also means that I can put more time into productive vegetable growing and gardening!

I’m a release site for Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue’s rehabilitated hedgehogs, so naturally the Smallest Smallholding is a hedgehog friendly environment. And guess what - I don’t have a problem with slugs or snails. However, the aphids came out in earnest earlier this month, sucking away on the ivy and Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose, steadily making their way to the greenhouse. Well, in fact, they were in the (unheated) greenhouse until the hard frosts and snow came back. They’d sucked the life out of my chives. So this year I have to really look at ways to discourage them and the other munchy munchers both here at the Smallest Smallholding and down on the allotment.

A solution is to undertake some companion planting to deter unwanted beasties - things like marigolds and basil next to the tomatoes, planting onions and carrots together, bay leaves next to the beans (get away Mr Weevil!) and any alliums near the fruit trees. We also have dill growing here and there, a favourite for the aphid-eating machines that are hoverflies.

Another solution is to wildlife garden to enourage the natural predators such as hedgehogs, hoverflies, ladybirds and lacewings. Supplying them with shelter spots and habitats, as well as food is vital. At the moment we have buddleia coming through - the equivalent of an open bar to a butterfly - lavender and rosemary, cosmos to be planted (flowered through to Novemeber last year), and I imagine a lot of the attractive annuals such the borage, cornflowers and verbena bonariensis will have reseeded themselves this year. But I definitely need to do more.

The birds help - sparrows in particular love to pick the aphids off the orange blossom. And of course the hens are also a great help in this respect too. They go fly catching on warm afternoons, cluck and shriek with delight when they unearth grubs, and love to pick at the really small slugs. Last year I let them have the run of the veg plots, and apart from decimating my lettuces (my mistake for uncovering them) and the odd nip at a carrot top, everything was left in place.

The only solution I haven’t managed to find yet, is how to deter Mr Moth from my damson and plum trees. Not sure if alliums deter moths, and I certainly don’t want to put up any of those indiscriminate sticky traps either.

Thursday was too good an opportunity to miss. Weatherwise I mean. I had a mountain of work to get through before this weekend, yet despite my looming deadline, I found myself loading my tools into the car boot and trundling down to the allotment.

I don’t understand why I put it off. Well, I do actually, it’s the weather. There’s no protecting down at the allotment so I avoid  going on days where it’s windy or drizzling. And there’s been a lot of those recently. But as I sat furiously typing away in the conservatory on Thurs, I looked up at the clear blue skies and thought “sod it!”. And so I did, for a couple of hours.

I resumed the digging, and after about ten minutes my back started hurting and I was horribly bored. I threw down my spade and trudged up to the other as yet untouched end of my plot, armed with my secateurs and hand fork. I was delighted to find what few raspberries are left had started to bud. They’re a bit straggly as I didn’t get a chance to prune them in time, but I’ll leave them be and see what happens. I should have enough at least for some sort of raspberry pudding come summer - maybe a rhubarb (also springing up on my plot) and raspberry crumble, or apple and raspberry pie? We’ll see, definitely something to look forward to.

I managed to clear out some of the top section, taking care not to disturb the shallow roots of the irises that still remain at the end. I think it used to be some sort of flower section. Although I did manage to dig up the mind-boggling selection of gladioli bulbs (or are they corms?) alongside great clumps of jerusalem artichoke tubery things (what an interesting display that must have made!). At least, that’s what I think they are. I’m all too aware of how prolific jerusalem artichokes can be, so I might have a go at planting them in a big tub at home. My aunt has volunteered to take a few off my hands too. I don’t like to see anything go to waste, and I’m always up for growing new things.

I also found a half-sunken pot of Pinks that I’ve brought back home along with the gladi bulbs. We have quite sandy free-draining soil here, so I think the Pinks should do very well here.

In my absence, the Christmas tree that was on the border between mine and my neighbour’s plot has also been cut down, which I’m actually quite sad about. I don’t know why, it just seemed quite happy, growing away there, being a bit rebellious.

Anyhow, as the sun was going down, Mum appeared to have a look at my findings, and what work I’d done. We measured out a path and cut in some borders, and I finished digging over (light and easy work) the top half of the allotment inbetween the border of irises down to the raspberry twigs (I’m at pains to call them bushes, because they’re clearly not that robust).  It doesn’t look like much work, but it’s a start at least. I just couldn’t face anymore bloody digging down the other end.

But by the time I left it started raining again. I don’t think it’s really stopped since. The water butts are full to overflowing and the hens aren’t venturing out from the greenhouse much. And being the wimp I am, looking at the weather forecast I think sadly it’ll be a few days before I get down to my allotment again.

Urgh, well - the kitchen is almost done thank goodness. For the past three days I have been able to actually see what I’m cooking, the dust is all but gone, I’m not hopping and skirting around containers and pots, and all in all, it looks pretty good. I have my kitchen back. YESsss!

I have a little bit of work to finish, and then I’ve got a very long list of things to do at the allotment and Smallest Smallholding, some of which include:

1. Putting the Early Potatoes in the ground

2. Putting in more of my Hercules, Stuttgarter Giant and Red Baron onion sets

3. Putting my tent cloche up and sowing my Gladiator parsnip seeds

4. Getting the rest of the Aquadulce Broadbeans in (better late than never)

5. Sowing my Mussleburgh and Porvite Leeks and Snowball Turnips

6. Collecting up some more loo rolls (last lot got put in the recycling by accident) to sow my Heirloom sweet pea seeds that I collected from the plants last year

7. Sow my Nantes Carrots and Golden Bell Peppers

8. Buy some wood and get Rich to build my greenhouse staging (I’ve done a very scientific diagram for him to follow)

9. Buy some wood and get the compost compartments built

10. Do a big ‘poo run’ and stick on compost.

11. More digging (and back pain, and general boredom)

12. Getting the borders sorted on one side for the flower bed.

13. Buy another passion flower to trail up the trellis to disguise the chicken wire.

14. Some general landscaping in the ‘eating area’.

15. Find pots and sow my millions of herb seeds!

I could go on but I imagine you’re starting to get bored now.

In other news - we took Yoko and Cyn to the vets. Yoko had a check up and it was decided that she’s doing fine as she is, so no need to drain her thus far. I really hope she can make it through the summer, because when she stopped laying over the Winter she shrunk back down to a ‘normal’ size.

Cynthia on the other hand, is still unwell. She tends to go in cycles of being ok for about 3 weeks, then gets a problem with her crop, as well as the lack of egg laying and swelling underneath. So we took her in, and it turns out she has a ‘mass’ inside her, just where the eggs pass down. She did a funny egg a few months ago, and we think it may be another one that’s lodged itself there and it may be ‘walled off’ like an abscess. The vet thought that she was a bit young to have a tumour, but didn’t discount it. She said that problems elsewhere can cause problems with the crop too, which is perhaps why Cyn keeps having this reoccuring sour crop problem. It always seems to clear up with the Nystatin though. So at the moment, she’s having 1ml oral baytril a day (baytril works on contact, so getting it to pass through her system is the best way to attack this ‘mass), and we’re waiting a month to see whether the mass has grown or shrunk. If it’s grown, then there’s the option of an exploratory op, and depending on what that finds, surgery. All of which carry risks of course. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime, I’m trying to keep her well fed and comfortable. She’s not lethargic as such, just a little bit withdrawn and not gobbling her food. I think the sour crop is returning, so today I’m zipping up to the vet (10 miles away) to get some Avipro and see whether we should start another course of Nystatin or not. Apparently if a hen has a fungal infection, baytril can actually compound the problem so we really need to keep a close eye on her. She’s up and about, she seems happy enough outside so I’m hoping and praying that in a month we’ll not be facing a really difficult decision.

Aside from our hen troubles, we got through Easter fine, had a lovely visit from Rich’s parents, and we’re both now on a healthy eating kick. We have a wedding and my school reunion that I’m organising (am I mad?) in May, and I don’t want to look like a spotty beached whale for either event. Plus, there’s the summer, and being plump during the hot summer is not fun. I’ve got loads of gardening, smallest smallholding and allotmenteering to do, as well as swimming, so hopefully that should get me back in shape. And of course, with my kitchen back (not that it went away as such), I am looking forward to a heck of a lot of baking and cooking, especially with my own home-grown produce.

Just a quicky - budgetary restraints and a severely underfunded local library are preventing me from investing in Sarah Raven’s Cutting Garden book. So I thought I would write a post here in the hope that someone has some fantastic ideas of cut and come again flowers that I can grow. I have already allocated some space for Dahlias, but above and beyond this I’ve failed to do any decent amount of research into this ‘genre’ of gardening. So any suggestions are most welcome!

It’s a miserable day outside, not very motivational weather. I’m having problems with my motivation at the moment, I think it’s mostly to do with the fact that I’m a complete night owl and never go to bed ‘on time’. On time being a reasonable time that most others would go to bed. It really messes the start of my day up as I find it hard to drag myself out of bed and stay up.

So I’m changing my habits as of today. Think of it as a nod to the leap year, today being 29th of Feb and all. A chance to mark the day when I started working harder and getting some sort of consistency and routine in my life! Working from home is great, but you have to be about six million times more committed and self-discplined than normal in order to really make it work. I’ve been naughty and spend far too much time floating around daydreaming.

So this is how it goes - I get up, I stay up and I get my work done in the mornings. I eat a proper home-made lunch and then the rest of the day is mine for doing something fun but constructive. Goodness knows the Smallest Smallholding has been in a state of stasis for weeks now, completely and utterly down to me. I tried digging some more of the larger veg plot, but my back problems (thanks to falling halfway down the stairs and landing smack on my back) of late haven’t helped. So I have to do little and often, which can be a drag. Oh but listen to me! Moan moan moan! Come on woman! Sort it out!

So, the plan is that when I’m paid early next week, we’re going to take a trip to get some (FSA sourced) untreated wood and start constructing a proper container for our compost. It currently sits under the Dogwood, suffocating all the runners that have previously threatened to take over the whole of mid-Bedfordshire. But every the compost heap grows out of all control, so actually accessing the really nice compost is difficult. Plus it looks very unsightly, and although I understand so many things in the Smallest Smallholding have to be very functional, there’s nothing wrong with making them look pretty too (I’m a girl, give me a break). Another job is to finally but another border around the second veg plot that was dug out last year. I started my veg experiment with two tiny plots - and everything apart from my chantennay carrots (carrots are actually pretty hard to grow! Plus, I sowed them far too late) were a veritable success.

I’m also going to either buy the wood for my greenhouse staging or be a bit naughty and just buy it. I really really really want to get going with my seed sowing, everything is ready and waiting - compost, seed tray, loo rolls for sweet peas, potatoes chitting - so I just need somewhere to put it all. I haven’t even bought my flower seeds yet, although I’m going to try and beg, steal and borrow as many cuttings as I can, and use my own seed collections. Even just thinking about it gets my brain whirring and the seratonin pumping - my seashell cosmos that I grew from seed last year were a veritable success, and very popular with the bees well into November. I’m also going to brave the wind and dullness today and get some long-awaited shredding done. But first - as I promised myself, work first, play later!

I’ve been down on the allotment again today with Mum - I’ve let her have a portion of it as her north-facing garden is also overlooked by next door’s rampant willow and beech trees. So not all of last year’s crops were a success for her.

Down on the allotment it’s been like a voyage of discovery, unearthing treasures from the past. We had a scrabble around the ‘top’ end, where the half-dead rasberry canes are (debatable as to whether they’ll be a goer this year) and found some irises and tulips coming up. Mum found an old pot of something turned upside down and exclaimed with delight that they were a ‘find!’. She then proceeded to bag whatever they were up (some sort of bulb) and look very pleased with herself.

It’s been like my own mini version of the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Trying to piece together the story before I arrived, finding remnants and clues. Rather than being left for 80 or 90 years, it’s probably only been a matter of months, but in allotment terms, that’s long enough. Incidentally, I’ve been wanting to get hold of a DVD of the Lost Gardens of Heligan - I find the story spooky, fascinating and inspiring. It’s all very romantic, harking back to a time that always seems to possess a sort of grandness and classiness, the likes of that’ll never be experienced again. I have a couple of Heligan books, the Heligan Vegetable Bible and The Kitchen Gardens of Heligan - two interesting and recommended reads.

Anyhow I’ve declared today that I want my allotment to be the prettiest allotment on site. If we get a shed up it’ll be painted and looked after - functional AND stylish. Mum says a good border can make a lawn - I guess the same could (partly) apply to an allotment - keep the sides neat and trim and it’ll look a heck of a lot better. I want colour, variety and companion planting, so it looks full and buzzing. It’ll do everything it needs to do - growing veg, attracting handy pollinating insects, for cutting flowers - but look damned good at the same time. Sounds more like a potager when I think about it.

Yesterday I was very surprised to encounter a frantic looking bee whizzing around the Smallest Smallholding. I don’t know whether it was a bumble bee, as I’m well aware I call any sort of fluffy-fat looking buzzy bee ‘bumble’, when in fact it could be one of a number of different types of bee.

I looked around me and wondered where it was going to find some nectar - there was nothing around in flower, only berries on the pyracantha and it seems the hens had done a great job of trampling down what few crocuses there were. In a way I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t managed to provide for Mr Bee. No winter colour, no winter pollen or nectar. I just hoped he could find something somewhere so he wouldn’t starve. I’m pretty sure he was a solitary bee - maybe a mason bee? Who knows, before I could get a proper look he’d zipped away.

So it made me think really long and hard about planting schemes. I’ve always said my objection is to make the Smallest Smallholding a hub of food and shelter for all sorts of wildlife, so naturally there is going to be a lot of wildlife planting. I’m keeping my fingers and toes crossed that the verbena bonariensis seeds I sowed last autumn will come through this summer - bees and butterflies love them and the goldfinches feast on their seeds in the late autumn. Which is actually quite helpful as they’re actually quite prolific self-sowing plants. And the riotus colour of the cosmos were very welcome last year, as well as being a veritable success as far as Mr Bee and Miss Butterfly were concerned. Oh, and more sweet peas. But I need more! More interest, more colour, more juicy sweet nectar.

I have a woodland area that I’m currently trying to design too, that’ll hopefully eventually look like it’s been there since the year dot and serves the wildlife well. Can’t have anything that might be toxic to hens though (so foxgloves are a definite no-no), and I need height. In a rainshadow under the fruit trees. So plants that look great but are dry shade loving. Argh! Hellebores?

I think soon I’m going to get the seed catalogues out again. I’m supposed to be saving up to fix the car and mend the fence, and get a haircut (much needed after 6 months, I look like worzel gummage), buy the wood for the greenhouse staging, finish renovating the kitchen….but somehow the seeds always take priority, don’t they?