Hothouse (contd)

Well, the promised photographs of my garden didn't materialise yesterday. I spent the morning in Leigh Woods with my daughter, who was taking photographs of natural forms for her GCSE art project, and the afternoon at the annual community choir convention at St George's Hall.

The woods were a refreshing change from the city - fresh shoots and buds and birdsong. The singing was uplifting and joyful. All in all a good day.

But back to the photographs:

This is our back yard from the first floor. I wasn't lying when I said it was small, was I?

The view would have been better without the clothes on the line but it was too good a drying day to miss. The pond is in the middle of the rockery and the mini greenhouse is just visible in the bottom right hand corner. The plan is to grown runner beans in containers at either end of the rockery wall and train them up along the fence. The hanging basket will hold trailing tomatoes. The ledges around the rockery are ideal perches for pots of herbs and shoots.

If you look very carefully you can see two of our four frogs in the under the foliage.

The pond is heaving with tadpoles after bumper deposits of of spawn. I don't think our pond will be able to support many more frogs so most of them are going to have to find somewhere else to live. In any case I'm hoping to find rather fewer slugs in our garden this year.

There isn't much to eat in the garden yet except rhubarb, which has already given us a a juicy crumble, and this vibrant chard. It's growing very happily in the rockery and is an example of how vegetables can be grown for aesthetic as well as functional purposes.

Finally, a photograph of our mini greenhouse, which is now much fuller than this.