What is it about gardening that makes one feel so righteous? I mean I can spend any number of hours doing housework or tiding out cupboards and the end result is similar - a slightly clearer, tidier, cleaner area but somehow doing it inside leaves me cold and somewhat dissatisfied, as though I should have managed to do more - clean more rooms, tidy more cupboards. Wheras outside, no matter how much of the garden still looks abominable, I can sit back and admire the area I have transformed and feel proud.
Maybe it's just that housework isn't for me.......and I suspect that some would say that they could have told me that years ago!
Anyway, I digress. This year we decided to create two vegetable areas. One now belongs to the kids and the other is a truly adult domain (which probably means that the little people will refuse to water it and will aim for that area as soon as their feet go anywhere near a ball!). The girls chose their plants and then drew up a plan of where they wanted to plant them.
We then dug the plot over a couple of times, added compost and some new bought earth (that didn't have lots of stones in it!) and created a path to be used for tending to and watering the plants. Little boy is still learning that you should only walk on the path (much to the girl' s annoyance) but so far he has only trampled on two lettuce - with me doing to diving scoop ups to save the basil and the courgette plants!
We have so far planted 15 lettuce, 6 tomatoes (2 cherry and 4 "normal") a courgette plant, 2 small pepper plants and a large red pepper plant, a raspberry plant and 6 strawberry plants. Having planted all the lettuce together I suspect it means that we will have a glut of salad in a few weeks (assuming little boy's clod hopping feet don't get them first) but when it is 2 euros for 15 plants it seems a little churlish to ask for fewer.
There was much excitement this morning as the girls are "sure" that the tomatoes have grown. For the moment 6 little stern eyes are keeping weeds at bay and I'm fairly certain that the strawberry plants are suffering from an excess of water - being closest to the tap they seem to get watered every ten minutes. I also have no doubt that this excessive attention will wane but if nothing else we had a great weekend and I'm still on the high of the righteousness!!
Glad that 6 little stern eyes are keeping things in check. I could do with them on my allotment to help with the frenzy of spring planting. Do they have gardening pinnies with pockets for trowels etc? popsie xxx
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