Spring watch, parakeets and veg plots

I'm watching Spring Watch, which is a lovely show on BBC 2. I'm sad to see Bill Oddy or 'Body' as we like to call him (Tom Hanks is also affectionately known as 'Thanks' in our household) is not presenting the show this year. I just love watching the birds and seeing he chicks grow. It's just a nice show to watch after a hard day at work (I generally roll in as it starts at 8pm!). Chelsea Flower Show has recently been on as I'm sure most of you know. Here's for the shocking revelation - I must confess to not being all that interested in gardening so I've been nodding and smiling (eyes glazing over) as people mention it. Perhaps I haven't quite reached the age where I get excited over hydrangeas (ooh, I knew the name of a plant other than rose or primrose! :-))? In fact, if anyone lives in Sussex and wants a Hydrangea than let me know because I have one going spare. I just get bored in the garden, I love veggie growing because in my head there's a purpose to it, but I haven't inherited my mum's love of gardening. Perhaps as I get older I'll get the bug? Anyway, we have all these beautiful national trust places near by (Sheffield Park Gardens and Wakehurst Place) and I'm just that fussed either way whether we go or not.

As the name of my blog would suggest, I started this blog to record the progress of my veg growing (and renovating our first house). OH and I have been growing veg for a while now, we were quite the trend setters being by far the youngest (early twenties) allotmenteers in our allotment in Wimbledon. We had a large plot of about 30x15 metres, which was head high in brambles and was cleared to ground level in no time. We had quite a lot of succes and even managed to grow Okra (Ladies fingers) and water melons! It's so much fun when things work!

Now, not a lot of people know this, but in South London there are wild parakeets! We used to see them all the time at the allotment! When they filmed 'The African Queen' back in the 50s, they released 2 thousand of them and they have since thrived! There's an interesting fact for you that you can slip into conversation at a party! ;-)

Now of course we no longer have need for an allotment - I have my secret garden, also known as the 'allotment' out the back of our house. I had a look yesterday and the potatoes, broad beans and onions are coming along nicely. We planted out the sweetcorn yesterday (nothing like home grown sweetcorn!) and I have 3 of my tomato plants (grown from seed, now about 3 foot tall!) in an old Belfast sink. No photos I'm afraid, I can rarely be bothered to take any (so lazy!). So you'll have to make do with a photo of me with three chins (god, I need to lose weight!) from Saturday!

[Observe the empty dessert bowl! I don't normally look quite this miserable!]

TTFN

Sian x