One of the few TV programmes I’ve deigned to watch lately has been the very entertaining My Dream Farm, presented by the spiffing Monty Don. The sort of chap you’d be quite pleased to have for an Uncle (of course all my Uncles are already brilliant, an extra one that’s good at farming wouldn’t go amiss).

This proggy strikes a chord with me simply because I’d love to have my own bit of land and get a sheep and a cow and breed horses*. Only a few acres though, maybe a dozen at the most.
Just imagine: up at sparrows fart, work hard all day in all weathers, sell lots of produce, hold regular events at the farm to keep customers coming in: it’d be great! It’s only since watching this proggy that I’ve come to realise that this sort of thing is actually possible! Of course it would take lots of hard work and commitment. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. Cor, it ain’t half tempting!
First thing I got into in our first house (first opportunity to do so) was to get working the garden to produce delish veggies. At the time I remember thinking how ace it would have been to be allowed to do that years before, which was reinforced after the first crunch of my own home-grown runner beans… they’ve never tasted so good as when you’ve grown ‘em yourself! Alright so I used to have an allotment which I didn’t do much on: soon as I got it we came up with the plan to buy a proper house so I did get distracted a bit with that. Hmmm.

Maybe I have green enough fingers to do it. I dunno. Praps I should I blame my French teacher at skool for making us watch Jean de Florette. Any road up, I’ve been looking at this site with great interest for the last half hour!

‹Would love to shout, just once, “Get Orf Moi LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!”›

*10 points if you get that without googling.

Spring is here at last! We have snow-drops! *does little happy dance on patio*

Had a thoroughly enjoyable fire in the back garden on Thursday. What better way to dispose of a load of old wood? No neighbours had their windows open this time, so I seized the opportunity* to burn stuff whilst listening to the radio, reading a book and drinking a couple of tinnies. Lovely and warm it was too, and I’m left with a bit of wood ash for the compost.

And talking of time off work well-spent, here’s what we get up to in work.
We like to keep a note of repeat responses from our web development team; guess which is our favourite? Not hard seeing as I’ve only shown you three out of a possible six…

‹still has another day and a bit left of the extended weekend!›

*A lovely word, comes from the latin Ob Porto, lit. to wait outside port for the tide to swell enough to sail in.

Ah, thank goodness for the Sun! After the recent gloom and snow, it was fab to see Sol broadcasting hither and hon across the sky this weekend. It certainly motivated T and I to doing some outdoorsy stuff and I for one am feeling all healthy and wossname. Vigourous. Yes, that’s the right word I think.

We’ve amassed a significant collection of veg seeds over the last couple of years (thanks to a few donations) and would hate to see them go to waste: simply don’t have enough room to plant them all.
Some packs are just outside of their sow-by date but they’ll probably be OK. The usual stuff:

Broccoli
Cabbage
Calabrese
Carrots (several varieties!)
Dwarf Beans
Leaf Beets
Marrow
Onions
Parsnips
Pumpkins
Radishes
Runner Beans
Salad Leaves
Squash
Tomatoes

Don’t fret, we’ve kept back plenty for ourselves! That list is all the spare. Even if I manage to get another allotment plot, I’ll not need them all! If you fancy any of these, don’t go out and buy them; have mine for free. Just bagsy whatever you want in the comments.

Thanks to all the previous digging and topping up with home-made compost, the veg beds only took half hour to dig over today followed by some industrious raking to break up the bigger sods.

I would have had a small controlled bonfire-in-a-can today as well but amazingly one of my neighbours has gone out leaving her bedroom window wide open. Tchoh. How inconsiderate.

And finally, some of you may have noticed the full moon at perigee (nearest the Earth in it’s orbit) the other night, accompanied by Mars… a truly beautiful sight! Here’s my attempt at taking a piccy with my silly old point ‘n’ shoot:

Clicky for bigger.

‹Roll on Spring!›