Monday 26 April 2010

Veg, veg and....ice cream

We got the gardening bug this weekend. We swept and tidied, pruned and hacked and dug and dug. Then we planted and planted some more and a little more and then sat back, ate ice creams and felt smug!

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!!

1 comment:

  1. 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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