Somehow, I’ve managed to go a whole week without writing here. It’s mostly been a fairly lethargic week without much interest in anything much, let alone putting words and sentences in order on a computer screen.

It’s not just the blog that’s been neglected of late, but also the garden. I’m starting to wonder whether keeping track of crops, even small potted crops, isn’t a bit beyond me. I haven’t remembered to feed any of them (although the sky has done a good job of watering them!) and it looks like a fairly low success rate again this year.

One of my potato plants has gone yellow and has black spots all over the leaves, as does the other plants (they just haven’t gone yellow yet) which I’m sure isn’t a good sign. I’m not even quite sure when I’m supposed to start digging them up, weren’t they supposed to flower or something? They are of the Charlotte variety.

The salad leaves planter (which I’d stopped bothering to cut for salads as the leaves were fairly bitter and the kids hated it… can’t say I was overly keen either) has gone completely wild and is a riot of flowers and not an awful lot of leaves. At least they were only a free packet of seeds from Lakeland, so not a great loss – and at least the bees seem to love it. I can pretend I’m doing my bit for wildlife conservation.

The tomatoes still seem rather stubby and haven’t grown an awful lot. I can’t remember at what point they shot up last year, but I’m sure it was earlier than this. They don’t look dead yet though, so there’s still hope with those.

The only crop that seems to be growing fairly well is my strawberry planter. We’ve had one ripe strawberry off it (carefully cut into four so we all got a teeny sliver each to avoid arguments!) and it was really tasty – not too sweet and full of flavour. There’s more ripening and on their way – I doubt we’ll manage a whole bowl of strawberries off it, but a strawberry to taste here and there is always appreciated.

Perhaps at some point I’m just going to have to admit to myself that the pleasure of growing your own food is in the anticipation rather than the harvest. Either that, or I’m going to have to be a lot better at remembering to take care of them.

Well, I managed to tear myself away from Tiny Adventures for a little bit and spend some time in the garden this morning.

It’s been a funny summer – with the only times it’s been decent enough to spend in the garden, we’ve been away instead. As a result, everything is looking rather neglected. So today, I gave the flowerbed a good hoeing to get rid of all the weeds that have accumulated, but also had a good look around to see what’s growing well and what I want to do differently next year.

The tomatoes have done very well. This is the second year I’ve grown them (Gardener’s Delight) and although they were late starting, I seem to have a bumper crop this year – I just hope all of them will ripen in time. Their flavour is really nice – so much better than supermarket tomatoes. I will definitely be growing these again next year.

The runner beans (first attempt this year) didn’t go quite as well. These were the variety ‘Enorma’ and while we seemed to get a reasonable crop, we just didn’t enjoy eating them that much – they were too stringy and chewy.

Another failure was a pepper plant that we were kindly given by Ackers and Bealers – I feel horribly guilty that it hasn’t thrived in my care, but it hasn’t so much as flowered, let alone produced even a solitary pepper. Not quite sure what I did wrong, but might not be a good choice for next year’s produce.

On the plus side, I put in some new border plants earlier this year: a hebe, 3 lavenders and an aster. The hebe and lavenders I can all put in the “stuff that didn’t die despite having me to look after them” column of gardening, and the aster has just thrived with loads of flowers, despite Akra Jr trampling them on pursuit of a football a day after I’d planted them. Really quite miraculous.

Also, Li’l Bhaji’s sunflower seed that he brought home from nursery actually flowered which I never thought it would as all the slugs from miles around all seemed to find it very delectable.

So, plans for next year. Well we’re currently waiting for a quote to get the front garden path redone (and all the loose stones that the neighbourhood cats poo in taken away) which will also involve ripping up some of the old plants and tree that’s blocking light from our living room.

I’d like to put in a small flowerbed under the window as a replacement so always open to advice on what to put in it. There’s a very bushy clematis next to that window and I would quite like to have some small (i.e. lower than the window!) rose bushes underneath without it all looking too formal – is that unrealistic?

Fruit and vegetables-wise, I’m going to grow the tomatoes again, but also go for potatoes, carrots and strawberries all in various tubs. I need to get going on the strawberries if I want them to fruit for next summer so am planning to get them planted in the next fortnight.

I’d like to get some spring bulbs for the front garden too, but can’t really start on that until the work’s done. I suspect that might be a project for the following year, instead.

… just supposing I was completely fed up of never finding the fresh herb in Tesco when I need it, and just supposing I decided to plant myself up a window box of herbs to solve this dilemma…

a) which herbs would I need for all basic cookery? The herbs I seem to use the most are parsley, oregano, basil… so they’d have to be there. Mint seems to be a popular thing to grow, but I can’t remember the last time I cooked with it, and I’ve heard it tends to get a bit carried away growth-wise. “Mixed Herbs” gets used a lot – what’s actually in that?!
b) how do I convert from dried herbs in recipes to fresh herbs (and vice versa for that matter?)
c) assuming I’m going to plant all this outside, what time of year should I do it?
d) would they all fit in a windowbox or am I going to have to think bigger?
e) Akra dearest, fancy putting up a windowbox for me at some point?

You know, we always used to laugh at my dad when he’d lop off mum’s plants when he was strimming the edges of the lawn. He used to do it with alarming regularity and baby plants that mum had recently bought at great expense seemed to be the usual target. Obviously, it was just a sign of his lack of care and attention, after all, strimming edges is hardly rocket science, is it?!

Oh, if only it was. Then I might be able to do it.

My in-laws very generously bought us a strimmer for our moving home present. A very smart Black & Decker where the plastic cord bit (yes, that’s the technical term, okay?!) pulls out automatically as needed. I read the instructions – seemed simple enough. Let’s get to work.

Oh. My. God. I’m lethal. Maybe it’s genetic?

I am very glad I had my docs on my feet even though they didn’t get into the front line it was nice to have that reassurance. Akra kept hearing cries of “Oops!” and wisely didn’t come out to have a look until it was all done and then only muttered something safe along the lines of “very nice, much neater now”.

The problem is that it’s just so bulky and heavy and powerful. Then you’re supposed to swing the thing in a graceful arc at a 20 degree angle to the grass. That is challenging enough. Then you have to remember that the whole point of a strimmer is getting to those awkward grass growing places like bang up against the fence or the shed (the noise the plastic thing makes as it hits wood is a bit scary too). As an added excitement factor, the builder of this house seemed to delight in edging beds with small stones that fly up in random trajectories (usually ending at your head) if you accidentally swing the strimmer too close. We laughed when we saw the illustrations prescribed safety goggles – now I’m not so sure!

Oh well. It’s very nice. Much neater now.

I’m making the most of the good weather this morning and getting down and dirty with my flower beds … yes the joys of weeding.

Actually, although I spend ages putting off the task, I find weeding rather enjoyable. I usually leave it until the weeds have reached jungle proportions so it’s quite a physical job. So there I am, out in the quiet of the morning, ripping up weeds, listening to birds singing their hearts out, drinking in the smell of freshly turned earth. A time of contemplation, I feel far closer to the divine out here than I ever did having a “quiet time” of bible study and prayer.

Two books come to mind as I clear the way for my plants to breathe again. The first is Anne of Green Gables. I can’t remember the exact quote but there’s a part where the young Anne explains that she can’t understand why people go inside into a dark gloomy church to pray. If she wanted to pray to God she would go into a field and throw up her arms to the sky in praise. That’s a little how I felt this morning.

The second book is The Secret Garden. I am not a good gardener. I don’t really know what I’m doing. However, there’s something almost primal, a longing for a “patch of earth of my own” just like little Mary Lennox, and watching things grow that at first looked lifeless is a special kind of magic. There’s memories of my childhood mixed up in all that (hence the book choices, I guess) – the scent of earth reminding me of mum and dad digging up potatoes and sieving the earth. The delight I felt in finding an old glass marble inside the sieve – previously lost for a couple of generations. Fighting the birds for the first fresh raspberries (and losing!)

As I said, I’m not a great gardener, but I am proud of what I’ve achieved with the overgrown wilderness that was here when we moved in. I’ve tidied it up considerably. My biggest thrill was planting a raised bed full of cotton lavendar – I couldn’t afford much so picture 23 tiny little one-inch diameter plants looking completely lost in a huge flowerbed. I was terrified that I was going to kill them off and even at that size they’d cost so much. Today, one year later, with a mix of nuture and neglect they’ve flourished and there’s not a single gap between them.

I’ll miss this garden when we move.