Hothouse

A fortnight ago I bought a mini greenhouse (£17 from Asda) which kick started my return to gardening after a long cold winter. I was on holiday and the weather was warm and sunny - perfect conditions for pottering around in our back yard.

I dug out my collection of seeds but had to bin most of them as they were seriously out of date. So it was down to the Riverside Garden Centre and back to Asda to replenish my stock. I used the River Cottage's Veg Patch Handbook to guide me to the best varieties, but also came across a number of seeds specifically designed for containers.

We don't have a big garden. If I discount the narrow strip between the rear extension and the wall between the houses (which is too shady for most plants) then we're left with an area measuring roughly 15 feet square. Two thirds of this is concreted over, with a raised rockery taking up the remaining third. My dream is to dig the whole garden up and start again but, in the meantime I rely on containers.

Once Alan had erected the greenhouse I soon filled it with dozens of pots sown with my new seeds. There were four kinds of tomatoes (Super Marmande, Balconi Red, Tumbling Tom Red and Harbinger), dwarf broad beans (The Sutton), peas (Hurst Green Shaft), runner beans (Polestar), squash (Cobnut), salad leaves, aubergine (Orlando), courgette (Firenze), chili pepper (Prairie Fire), basil (Italiano Classico), Thai basil, flatleaf parsley, coriander, sunflowers (Giant Single) and butterfly flowers. Then I sowed nastursiums (Jewel Mixed), calendula (Art Shades Mixed), beet (Cardeal) and borage in outside pots. I sowed more peas (ordinary ones meant for cooking) in a window pots to be eaten at shoot stage. In a large pot I planted our first lot of salad potatoes (Vales Emerald). The front of the house was not forgotten either as I sowed three window boxes with salad leaves and radishes (French Breakfast).

I've been following the BBC series Edible Gardens presented by Alys Fowler, which has been a source of inspiration. Alys taught me how to plant an indoor microgarden (instructions here) and I've now got broccoli and watercress growing in ice cream containers on our bedroom window.

Two weeks later most of the seeds I sowed during the Easter holidays are showing signs of life, with the noticeable exception of any of the tomatoes. So I've sown some more of all of them and am hoping they'll germinate more successfully. Alan also sowed some spinach (Bordeaux), French sorrel and fennel (Romanesco) in the rockery.

I've really enjoyed being out in the back garden whether I've been planting, tidying, checking on the progress of our multitude of tadpoles, hanging out the clothes, helping the girls with their homework, relaxing with a cup of tea, admiring our neighbour's glorious forsythia or eating our meals outdoors (the first of the year being a chorizo tortilla with wild garlic and nettle pesto on sourdough bread - delicious).

Roll on summer!

PS This post is crying out for a few photos. I'll get my camera out tomorrow and remedy the situation.

The First Day of the Rest of my Year

I'm not a great believer in self help books but following a link from a fellow blogger (Mrs Green or Almost Mrs Average, I can't remember which) I bought a copy of One Year to an Organised Life by Regina Leeds. It arrived at the end of last week and I've spent some time this weekend reading the introduction before embarking on my journey to organisational heaven!

The first chapter deals with time management and the kitchen, two areas in which I could do with some inspiration. I can potter for Scotland and never find the walnuts I last saw on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. So I'm going to to reassign time spent on various activities and cultivate some good habits. (It apparently takes 21 consecutive days to establish a habit!) I'll be recording my progress in a journal with an cover featuring the famous Dr Seuss cat trying to keep half a dozen or so items in the air without dropping any of them (illustrated above). Very apt I think.

Despite it being Mothering Sunday I've received a woeful lack of encouragement from my daughters who have reminded me of all my previous (unsuccessful) attempts to impose order on the chaos that has become my life.

I'll show them!

'Giving up' v 'Taking up' for Lent

It is the custom, and not just in religious circles, to 'give up' something for Lent. Based on Jesus' 40 day fast in the wilderness there is undoubtedly something to be said for foregoing the physical in pursuit of the spiritual. However it can be frustrating and often leaves you feeling smug, if you've managed, or disheartened, if you haven't.

The CSMV nuns who ran St Mary's School in Pune encouraged us to 'take up' something for Lent instead. I remember sewing a romper suit for a child in their orphanage. It required time and effort on my part and made a material difference to someone's life. Besides which, positive actions are always more satisfying than negative ones.

In previous years I have followed, albeit sporadically, the Love Life Live Lent booklets produced by the Church of England, which encouraged readers to engage in a variety of random acts of kindness etc. I couldn't find any sign of these booklets this year so I turned to Christian Aid, who have an excellent project entitled Count Your Blessings. Every day you are given a statistic relating to world poverty followed by an appropriate action to take. For example, today I have learned that wasted food costs the average family £420 a year. I have then been asked to give 42p for each type of food I bin this week. By the time I reach Easter Sunday I shall not only be more aware of the plight of those less fortunate than myself, but I shall also have a jarful of coins to put towards making our world a better place for everyone.

Old habits die hard though, and I have also pledged to give up biscuits and cakes between meals.

Happy Days!

This evening my elder daughter and I walked up the hill to Totterdown to have a thali with some friends. A thali is the Hindi word for the plate on which the meal is served. The number and type of component dishes vary, any combination of rice, flatbread, vegetable curry, dal, sambhar, raita and salad.

My vividest childhood memories of thalis are from the three and half day journey from Pune to Coonoor we made every summer. We would stop at one of our favourite restaurants and take a seat in a room thronged with noisy diners. There was no menu, there being little need for one. At lunchtime everyone ordered a thali. Service was swift and within minutes large stainless steel plates were placed before us, their edges rimmed with half a dozen or so smaller dishes (watis) each filled with delicious food. My favourites included potatoes flavoured with mustard seeds and stewed drumsticks! In the middle was a heap of flatbread (puris or chappatis). As we ate our watis were continually topped up by an army of waiters circulating with pots of steaming curry and mounds of steaming hot puris. After we'd had our fill of bread the rice would arrive and if we'd had the foresight to save some until now, we'd douse it with sambhar (thin lentil and vegetable soup) and finish it with a spoonful or so of dahi (yoghurt) to aid our digestion. There was sometimes, but not always an Indian sweatmeat, and the whole meal was washed down with glasses of water. Then, after the ridiculously cheap bill was paid we'd pile back into the car and continue on south.

The Thali Cafe's non-dairy thali wasn't in the same league but it was good enough for me this evening.

Letter to the Editor

For those of you who do not live in Bristol, the Evening Post is our local daily newspaper. I don't have time to read a daily paper and have only ever bought it when there's been a specific reason for doing so.

I have, however, recently begun to log on the the online version, This is Bristol. I wanted to keep up to date with the proposed Tesco development on the site of our local football stadium and decided that this would be the easiest way to do so. I was also interested in hearing other people's views on the matter.

Good idea? Well, yes and no. I was able to keep up with developments, albeit biased in favour of Tescos, but as for a rational debate on the pros and cons, forget it. Every article provoked a flurry of comments but the majority of them were irrelevant, prejudiced or downright offensive. Whenever anyone made a serious point they were met with ridicule and scorn. The comments section was dominated by a few individuals who appeared to have nothing better to do all day than to trade insults with each other. I was never brave enough to sacrifice my opinions to their ravaging.

Today I logged on to read Mike Ford's report on the 'Love Bemmy' meeting I attended on Monday evening. This was arranged to allow a group of Bedminster/Southville residents to hear from the woman who had been the inspiration and driving force behind last year's Love Easton campaign. I was impressed by what I heard and, given that it was our first meeting, the subsequent discussion had gone well. Nothing was decided but there was recognition of the value of such an enterprise and enthusiasm for the tasks ahead. Mike Ford wasn't as impressed, but once again it was the comments that caused me to despair. It would have been wonderful if contributors could have come up with suggestions as to how such a campaign might work, or even issues that might stand in its way, but instead it was the usual toxic blend of fear and prejudice that does nothing to foster a healthy community and everything to destroy it.

This time I did make my contribution, not in the comments section, but in an email to the editor suggesting that if the paper aspires to be the forum for discussion the city needs, then it must surely adopt some form of moderation.

Bloggers for Haiti

If you've been moved by the images and stories coming out of Haiti during the last week but have not yet dug deep to help make a difference, then you might like to consider donating to the Bloggers for Haiti appeal. They are funding ShelterBoxes to provide tents and basic equipment for Haitians made homeless by the earthquake. The aim was to raise enough money for one box. On the current total they should be able to stretch to six. Maybe we could get it to seven ... or eight?

A Guid New Year

Not having got to bed until the wee hours we slept in this morning and decided to have a (very) late breakfast in the Lounge. It was packed out but we managed to get a table. We were advised it would be a 45 minute wait for our food so I popped over the road to buy the Guardian to read over our hot drinks. The G2 section was given over to climate change and I was particularly taken by an article by Andrew Simms in which he quoted from EF Schumacher.

'We must do what we conceive to be right and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we'll be succesful, because if we don't do the right thing, we'll do the wrong thing and we'll be part of the disease and not part of the cure.'

I think I could do worse than taking being guided by this principle in 2010.