Gardening at last!

I was woken up this morning at 6:18am by Marco, I'm sure he was trying to tell me the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day for an early morning walk! After a cup of Earl Grey and marmite on toast I looked out of the window and had to agree with him, it was a beautiful day and yes we would go on an early morning stroll. We ended up walking miles, even though I have lived here for 10 years I'm still finding more public footpaths to explore. Today we tried out a new path and had no idea where it would lead us. I prefer to do circular walks as I don't like coming back the same way we head out, which means sometimes the walks can be long!

As the weather was good we could see for miles once we got to the top of the hill, but unfortunately I hadn't brought my camera with me this morning, doh! We saw so many spring flowers in bloom and lots of birds singing their little beaks off. It was a great morning for an early morning stroll.

I decided whilst out walking that today was going to be the day I finally get my ass into gear and get back out in the garden. With the terrible weather we've been having and hospital visits to see S, I hadn't done anything, not even sown a seed in doors! I was well behind schedule. I hadn't bought any new seed let alone looked at my crop rotation chart and to be honest I felt lost, which was ridiculous as I've been gardening for years! I just needed to get organised, once I knew what I wanted to plant and eat I could look at my charts and get planning, so what if I was later than normal.

Then a guardian angel (or gardening angel) knocked on my door! My lovely neighbour, was standing at the door holding a massive tray of plants for me. I could have cried, how did she know how I was feeling? I was overwhelmed with her generosity, I considered my ass kicked and to the garden I marched.

I have two 1.8m² raised beds and I have turned one of my borders into a vegetable patch too. I decided I would concentrate on the border veg patch first, which was overgrown with weed and a toilet for the neighbourhood cats! I sprung into action and cleared the weeds and cat doo doo's in no time. Marco wondered what on earth was going on.

My friend had given me 4 tomato plants, 3 sprout plants, 3 garlic plants, 1 elephant garlic, 3 early & 7 main crop potato sets, 1 chop suey green plant (James Wong), 2 lettuce plants (sorry can't remember the name but I remember that they are from 1800's), 2 cut and come lettuce plants, 15 red onion sets & 1 lemon eucalyptus plant.

I potted the tomatoes in larger pots and gave them pride of place on my kitchen windowsill alongside my faithful basil plant which has lasted for months even though I forget quite regularly to water it! 

In my borders spinach seeds were sown, early potatoes, garlic both the elephant and the normal varieties, 8 red onions and chop suey greens were planted and my herbs sorted out and given a bit of TLC. To finish it off I cast over some net to attempt at stopping the cats using it as a toilet and Marco using it as his digging ground!

After finishing off the border I walked over to my raised beds to take a look if anything had grown other than weeds over the winter. To my amazement I had quite a bundle of purple sprouting broccoli. This will make an appearance in my recipe collection soon.