It’s a strange thing how habits can change and one can find oneself over-indulging in new interests.  Am I exaggerating when I say that I have become pre-occupied with gardening?  The evidence is mounting.  I think it all started a couple of weeks ago when I was forced to deal with two horticultural tasks in my own garden.  I didn’t realise what I was getting into…

Firstly, I had to plant potatoes in my rather small and experimental vegetable patch (see previous post).  I took the vegetable growing a stage further and stuck in some cabbage and carrots also (I don’t even like cabbage; but they’ll make good presents for all my friends.)  

Secondly I have the problem of overgrown Laylandii trees which are encroaching on my garden and getting too large to handle.  In a bid to ensure I was planting my spuds correctly and to seek some solutions for my tree problem, I consulted the World Wide Web and the UKTV gardening channel.  Boy, was I opening a can of worms!  Back to back programming of Gardeners’ World with Monty Don and Toby Buckland, Ground Force with Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock, The Garden with Dan Pearson to name a few.  They sucked me in with their ‘top tips for spring’, interesting gardening techniques, and construction ideas.

In the past week I’ve visited 2 garden centres, added a gardening blog to my favourites and helped a 14 month old toddler to plant a sunflower…What is happening to me!?  I know I turned 30 recently but surely I’m too young to be visiting gardening centres and laughing at Titchmarsh’s jokes.  Could this be a mid-life crisis?  A fad?  A change in career? 

Either way I still need to deal with my laylandii.  Answers and advice on a postcard please.

this is a potato

 Tuesday is the first day of my working week and what a day it’s been.  I went to bed yesterday evening (Monday) feeling very pleased with myself for laying a 5ft path in my back garden, and I vowed to “kill dead things” when I woke up today (Tuesday).  I woke up late and subsequently very peed off.  Sporting my new pyjamas I crawled to the kitchen in agony feeling like i’d done ten rounds with Mike Tyson and looking like a geriatric. 

No milk.  Black coffee.  Bah!

Showered, shaved and feeling much better I shuffled to the study and discovered that I had lots of incredibly important face-booking, blog-reading and e-mailing to do.  2 hours later and my afternoon entertainment had arrived at the door.  I greeted them, we drank coffee and went book shopping.  Now it’s 4:30pm.

Heading home I console myself that there’s a good 2 hours before heading out for my dinner invitation.  One mile from the house I randomly bump into my mother and her mate who have been out shopping for wedding outfits.  “Who’s wedding?” i ask.  “Oh no-one in particular, its just good to be prepared for every eventuality”.  If they’re holding out for my wedding they’d better have supplies!

6:30pm and my Mother and her friend head off home and I head for my dinner.  Its a lovely, good, wholesome dinner which contained three of my ‘five-a-day’ portions.  We ate potatoes that had been grown in the garden.  I – all of a sudden – became terribly and genuinely interested in the art of growing potatoes.  I asked my hosts lots of questions and they patiently told me that I could grow my own potatoes in a half barrel of soil and mud if i wanted to.  If I plant in February I can harvest in June and I’d get dozens of potatoes for my efforts.  “You can’t go wrong” he said  “After the harvest thanksgiving last year we threw some leftover potatoes into the rubbish dump at the church graveyard.  We had a great crop of potatoes in June, and without even trying” he told me proudly.  “Did you eat them?”  I asked.  “Oh no, sure they grew in a rubbish dump in a graveyard, why would we eat them?!”  I blushed.

I’m going to get a half barrel of mud and muck and chuck in a few spuds in February.  I’ll be a farmer by June!       

It’s 10:30pm… I really ought to do some work!