Rich finds the switch that turns on Lucy’s mouth

The crashed van has now been moved into the street, and the electricity is back on. I know that because all the lights came on in the middle of the night and woke me up.

Anyhow, even before I’d exchanged on the house I knew I wanted to grow my own fruit and veg. There’s a greenhouse, and a handy corner of the garden that’s just right for cultivating your own food; neither too hot nor too dry, and with a fairly even spread of sun and shade throughout the day. Except this year - my first - it’s too much of a mess to use productively, so I’m resigned to growing things in the greenhouse for my first season, and moving out into the garden proper next year, or in time for the winter crops.

So this morning we took propagators and seeds and a big bag of compost left behind by the vendor and laid them all out in the greenhouse, ready for planting. I’m starting with salads.

So, while Rich planted out three different kinds of yellow and red tomatoes, I started on the sweet peppers, onions, chives and leaf salad which, if the packet is to be believed, should be ready to harvest in three weeks or less.

It’s stupidly exciting. After all, it’s not like I haven’t had home-grown tomatoes before. This is the first time they’ll have been my own, though, and although the house is still more of a house than a home, I do like the fact that they’re growing in my own greenhouse.

Mum, Andrew and Viv arrived soon after we’d covered them over and dropped the lids on the propagators, for olives and Pimms in the sun. Viv took us all out to lunch, and then we headed back home for an afternoon of games, simnel cake and playing with the horses. Rich managed to find a hidden switch on Lucy’s nose that made her turn up her lips. We thought it was a fluke at first, but every time you touched it she would gurn like she’d just sucked a lemon, and stick out her neck and head.

I don’t think I did so well at the games. I won Newmarket, lost the pick-up game, and claimed one victory out of four at Rummikub.

It was late and dark when we got back to the house, but still not cold, and so we poured some wine and went out to look at the seed trays. One of the most enjoyable Easters for years.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Garden, Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.