My Journey to Less Waste #3 - Feeling Overwhelmed

Hi there everyone 😃

I tell you what ...

My enthusiasm for less waste seems to be running away with me. I am seeing ways to reduce our own everywhere I look and I can hear myself turning into a bit of a less waste bore.

Photo by Bas Emmen on Unsplash

I really didn’t know just quite how much I didn’t know. Once you start looking for stuff about using less waste it is very easy to become more than a little overwhelmed and I have this over riding desire to share what I am learning ... just in case you didn’t know either.

There is so much I have been ignorant of ... I thought the stuff that went into my recycling bin all turned miraculously into something wonderful and could be recycled time and time again. I was proud of how full my recycling bin was each week and I wore it as a kind of badge of honour. I have been so naive ... and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

From watching programmes like Blue Planet, Drowning in Plastic and The secret Life of Landfill I have had my eyes well and truly opened. From following internet blogs and Facebook groups I have learned so much and I want to know more.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Where does the waste I put into my blue, green and black bins really go? What happens to it? Is my recycling really recycled ... or is it shipped off to a third world country to be dumped on a river bank and sit there until it flows into the sea? Does my general waste got to landfill? Will it still be there in another fifty years? 

Photo by Ayotunde Oguntoyinbo on Unsplash

I really want to know the answers to these questions.

I need to take responsibility ... we all need to take responsibility ... we all need to be more aware and we can all make a difference.

Some resources I have found really useful are a new blog I’ve come across called Treading my own Path and the Journey to Zero Waste in the UK and Ecobricks UK Facebook groups. All are really inspirational and full of ideas that I want to try and things that I hadn’t really thought of.

It has become really clear, really quickly ... in fact just after analysing a couple of days worth of rubbish, that there is loads we could all do as individuals to improve things.
Over the course of just a few days I decided I wanted to buy some reusable food bags for buying loose fruit and veg, lobby the council to allow us to put raw fruit and veg waste in our green bin, set up a local Facebook group of neighbours to share ideas and unwanted stuff, make some reusable face wipes, register with Terracycle for recycling some of the things that can’t go in our kerbside recycling bin, make full use of the supermarket plastic bag recycling scheme, build a wormery and start making Ecobricks .. and that’s just for starters. I know, completely bonkers.

Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash

I am in danger of becoming a bit swamped with things I want to do and think I need to just stop for a minute, take a breath and try and plan a bit more of a methodical approach, rather than going at things half cock. For me I want this to be a permanent lifestyle change and not just a fad, which makes me think I really need to give proper consideration to the changes I want to make and not do it all in one go.

As well as not wanting to run off at breakneck speed to try to change my (and, as a consequence, Martin’s) life overnight I don’t want to procrastinate and do nothing.

So I think I am starting to formulate a plan.

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Firstly I need to decide what my overall goal is. Do I want to recycle more? Do I want to reduce my use of plastic? Do I want to produce less waste in general? Do I want to make more use of what I already have? Do I want to influence others to change their habits too, or is it all of the above?

Once I have really thought about and decided this I think I will plan to make at least one permanent change a month, maybe there will be more than one, but I think I would rather take my time and concentrate on making one thing a permanent and sustainable change than just trying lots of random different things.

I will definitely be blogging about the changes, which will heighten my accountability and be a chance to share what I’ve done, how I did it and if it’s something I think I can continue with.

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

I’m sure some changes will be small and will be things that other people have been doing for years. I I do feel like I have been slow to pick up on the importance of this issue, but I will be making a real effort and real changes, however small.

I won’t achieve my objectives overnight but I am hoping that by starting with small things then momentum will increase over time. I hope in a year’s time I will be able to share a real tangible list of changes I have made that will have started to move me towards my overall goals.

I know this topic is a million miles away from what I normally write about but it is something that is really important to me so I do hope you will all give me the opportunity to share this journey with you and perhaps even support me along the way.

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

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My Journey to Less Waste #1 - In Just One Day

Hi there everyone 😀

After my 'Drowning in Plastic' post last week I’ve been thinking a lot about what Martin and I throw away as a household ... in general ... not just plastics, and if there is any way we can reduce the overall amount of waste we produce.

To be able to really think about this I thought the first place to start would be by looking at what waste we do actually produce. That way I thought I might be able to identify some changes I could make that didn’t end up costing me a lot extra and didn’t make my life too difficult. Clearly I’m nowhere near a full blown 'Zero Waste' protagonist just yet.

I decided to keep a record of all the waste that we produced over the course of a full day and picked a normal Thursday, Martin was at work, so there was just me at home.

First piece of waste I produced was plastic ... I emptied the toothpaste. It’s plastic and it’s kind of like a bottle so I will put it in the recycling, though I'm not really sure whether I should or not.

The post lady came ... some junk mail advertising deals at a local supermarket and two letters from my credit card company ... in two separate envelopes. One was my monthly statement ... could I go paperless? One was offering me an increase in my credit limit. I will file the monthly statement and keep it for 12 months, but everything else will either be shredded for recycling later or go straight in the blue bin.

I then had a drink of squash and emptied a plastic bottle of fizzy water. Do I really need to buy fizzy water? I know I could just use tap water ... but I don’t like it as much. There were also still a few bits waiting to be thrown out from yesterday ... a yoghurt pot and a meat tray.
I spent the majority of the morning ironing and contemplating whether I really need to use that fragranced ironing water that makes your clothes smell fresh ... after all, it’s another plastic bottle. As I’d already got some in I did use it, but I diluted it with tap water to make it go further, thus avoiding producing another empty bottle.

Whether or not I will scrap it all together and revert to tap water I’m not sure, but I am more than happy to dilute it to reduce the amount of bottles that I buy.

Lunch was a banana and a salad that I’d made yesterday, so just produced a banana skin, which up until last year would have gone in the compost bin ... Why oh why did we get rid of that?
Ironing finished it was time to start tea. A double dose of spaghetti bolognaise, from scratch, with extra portions for the freezer.

This created a stack of waste ...
Two mushroom tubs full of stuff that should be going in a compost bin ... Why can’t this go in my green bin? After all, if I’d grown fruit or veg in the garden and it had gone over it can then be classed as garden waste? What is the difference?

A stack of plastic bags from veg and wrappings from meat cartons and bits of kitchen roll that definitely had to go in general waste and a pile of cartons and jars for recycling.

Time for a quick shower and hair wash generating one toilet roll middle, one cotton wool pad and two cotton buds. I have already switched from plastic cotton buds to paper so will continue to use those, but I have been thinking more and more about making some reusable face wipes to replace my cotton wool pads. Not sure yet whether to make them with towelling, for an exfoliating feel, or with something softer, but I don’t plan on buying any more pads when my stock runs out.

There were no plastic bottles generated, though there will be over the course of time as pretty much all of our toiletries are in either plastic or glass bottles and jars and aerosol cans.
That was about it for today. We just generated another couple of bits of kitchen roll ... used as napkins with tea ... a crisp packet and another 2 litre pop bottle.

Of course none of this includes the ‘hidden’ waste that either gets flushed or drained away every day ... the ‘dissolvable’ dish washer and washing machine tablets and reams of toilet paper that we seen to get through ... I know, too much information.

Up until very recently I would have been quite proud of myself. After all, the majority of today's waste was heading for the recycle bin and even though we weren't composting the food waste surely it would just decompose in landfill.

Well, you will know from my 'Drowning in Plastic' post that recycling is certainly no magic bullet and, as for food waste decomposing in landfill, well, it seems that's unlikely too.

So ... there we have it. One day's waste.

Are there changes I could make quite easily? Yes, there are ...

• I could go paperless with regards to my banking
• I could stop using fragranced ironing water
• I could stop buying fizzy water
• I could re-instate my compost bin ... or I could try and get the council to allow us to put ‘green’ kitchen waste in the garden waste bin
• I could buy meat from a butchers, rather than the supermarket, though I guess then it would still be in a plastic bag, which probably can’t go in my recycling
• I could buy fruit and veg loose off the market
• I could switch to reusable face cleansing pads

The big question is ... Am I prepared to maybe experience a little inconvenience to try and make a difference? Now that .... I need to think about.

Doing this for one day has certainly been an interesting exercise and has already given me lots to think about. In just one day I’ve identified a good few changes I could make that would reduce the amount of waste we provide without causing us an additional cost and some changes could potentially save us both time and money

I think it's important that I repeat this exercise over some different days, especially a day when we do our weekly food shop, to get a better idea of how things look over time, then I need to make some decisions.

You may wonder why I am writing about this ... it’s not really because I think you are interested in seeing my daily waste.

But maybe, just maybe, if I actually write this stuff down and share it then I will be more likely to commit to change ... and if anyone is interested in doing the same then that can’t be bad 😀

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Drowning in Plastic

Hi there everyone 😀

Following my recent post about starting to stem the plastic tide I feel like I'm in danger of becoming more than a bit obsessed with how we use plastic and the impact it's having on our environment.
This week I've watched another programme on the BBC ... Drowning in Plastic ... highlighting the seriousness of this problem. It was both disturbing and fascinating and there were parts which I actually struggled to watch, especially when it came to the amount of pieces of plastic that made up the contents of a seabird's stomach.

If you want to watch it, it is on again on BBC2 on 20 October and available on iPlayer until the end of the month.
It certainly highlighted a number of things that I wasn't really aware of or had never really thought about ...

• Some of the World's biggest rivers have been turned into huge plastic arteries, transporting 50% of all the plastic that arrives in the ocean. Whole communities living by these rivers are finding it as being the only way to dispose of their waste. Of course, years ago this waste was all biodegradable so the order of things was kind of maintained. Nowadays things are totally different. These communities have been given the benefits of the lifestyle that use of plastics can bring but there is just no infrastructure for disposing of it once it is finished with.

• Traces of plastic waste have been found evident within seafood.

• There is currently an area larger than the size of France made up of throw-away plastic swirling at all depths of the Pacific Ocean ... Birds are even using it as a nesting site.

• Every single piece of plastic ever made still exists ... and will continue to do so for at least 500 years. 

• Only this week The Mail reported of a Fairy washing up liquid bottle being washed up on a Somerset beach that was nearly 50 years old and still pretty much totally intact.

I don't know about you but I find all of this pretty scary. It's changed the way I look at seafood ... I don't want to be eating plastic, in however small quantities. 

Have you read Dan Brown's latest book ... Origin? Perhaps Technium is not how it will end for us.

What will happen if we just keep on making plastic at the same rate that we have been? Where will it all go?

I must admit I believed recycling was part of the answer. It seems I've been duped, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. This quote comes from an article in The Independent and I must admit I was naive enough to believe that every time I filled my blue bin I was making a real difference ... 

If we all get a few containers and separate out our waste, it will be taken by some nice people who will magically make it go away without any negative consequences. Recycling is the grown-up version of squeezing our eyes shut, sticking our fingers in our ears and shouting "lalalalalala!"

I also didn't really understand the limits of recycling ... did you know that most plastics can only be recycled once? And that a plastic bottle doesn't come back as another plastic bottle? It's more likely to end up as part of the material that makes up a shoe, a jumper or a park bench. This means that once the second item reaches the end of its lifespan, so too does the original plastic - and it ends up in landfill, where it will sit for many, many years.

Glass and metals, on the other hand, can be recycled for an infinite number of times.

It makes me feel like I should be doing something

Some may say as individuals we can't make a difference, but what about the people who took it upon themselves to start sending Walkers crisp packets back to the manufacturers? Only this week Walkers have announced a new recycling scheme to start whereby crisp packets will be able to be dropped off at collection points or posted for free to be made into plastic chips for re-use.
It does seem that momentum continues to grow - Gardeners' World reported a week or so ago on the problem of the millions of black plastic plant pots we use every year. Goodness only knows how many end up in landfill because local recycling schemes can't cope with recycling black plastic. It's not that they aren't recyclable - they are, just not by the majority of local councils and with no easy way of being able to get them to the right place they just end up getting thrown in the bin. Manufacturers are now starting to trial a different coloured pot, hopefully it will be as effective as the black and we will start to see a shift.

I dread to think how much stuff is in landfill that could have been recycled.

So what can we do?

There are lots of small ways, as individuals, we can help. The BBC have set up a website called Plastic Watch which gives some suggestions and ideas and I am sure there is lots more information available.

For me, it feels obvious, I need to try and reduce the amount of plastic that I use and dispose of, especially of the single use variety.

I also really need to think about what goes into my general waste bin ... should it really be going somewhere else? Can it be recycled? Can I reuse it? Yes, it might mean a bit more effort and a trip to the 'tip', but every little really will help.

I have already started using natural beeswax wraps, in an effort to reduce the amount of cling film that we use. So far, this is working really well and we have drastically reduced the amount we use. We've just had a go at making our own and it's a really simple process. I think I will be sharing these with friends and family to try and spread the impact further.
I think the next thing that I'm going to give a try is re-useable face wipes, rather than cotton wool pads. I'm going to have a go at making some of these. I will let you know how I get on.

Apologies if this post feels a bit haphazard. It really is just a bit of a brain dump as to what is going on in my mind at the moment. I feel the need to make a bit of a personal commitment as to what I want to do as an individual to try and make a difference, but for now it all feels a bit piecemeal.

How about you?

Does the plastic problem keep you awake at night?

Are you doing anything to try and change the way that you use plastic?

Drop me a note in the comments ... I'd love to hear from you 😀

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50 Things to do before I'm 60 - 1 to 10

Back in October, before my 50th birthday in November, I decided I'd like to put together a list of 50 things I would like to do before I am 60.

I easily managed to complete a list of about 35 things but then began to struggle with building it up to 50. 

Having thought about this somewhat I have now decided that I don't want to just make my list up to 50 with random meaningless stuff just for the sake of it. 

I am going to go with what I have so far and will continue to add to the list over the next few years as I am sure new things will continue to appear that I'd like to achieve. 

From a blogging point of view I thought it might be good to share my lists in groups of 10 and here are the first 10 that I'd like to share, some of which I have already ticked off or have made a start on.

Hand make Christmas and Birthday gifts

When I finished work a year ago, I knew I wanted to spend more time doing crafty and creative stuff. My first hand made Christmas and birthday gifts were beaded bracelets, which I made for all the ladies for Christmas 2015.

I really enjoyed making them and even managed to make a few to order, which was really quite exciting.  I now have a cupboard full of beads and charms so am sure that more of these will be made for birthday gifts this year.

Make bramble jelly jam 

Late Summer last year saw a massive foraging outing for blackberries, which resulted in both home made wine, from scratch, and bramble jelly jam, which is just delicious.  I know I will be making it again this year.

Have a posh afternoon tea

Back in the Autumn, my good friend Jo and I managed to find time to sneak in a posh afternoon tea at a local restaurant and it was just lovely, really chilled out with lots of time to chat.  We are already looking forward to doing it again in the Summer when we can do it 'Al Fresco'.

Photo by Aashish Rao Photography
This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. 

Visit Balmoral Castle

A few years ago, Martin and I had an Autumn holiday in Banff, on the North coast of Aberdeenshire. On our way back we drove past Balmoral Castle. Since then I've always wanted to visit, as it just looked so pretty.  

The Castle is only open for a couple of months of the year so this year we have booked a cottage holiday near Ballater and have already booked our tickets to visit the Castle.

Make something in mosaic
Here's one that I seem to be dragging my heels on a bit.  I came back from our holiday on Dartmoor back in October, all fired up for having a real go at making something in mosaic.  I had lots of ideas and just needed to wait until I pulled together all of the equipment I needed to get started.
I've now got everything I need.  Tools, tiles, something to mosaic on, I just need to now get on and do it.  This is definitely one that I want to work on this year and am totally committed to actually producing something, as against just buying more bits and pieces.  Watch this space. 

Complete my online photography course
For my 50th birthday, my good friends Jackie & Phil, bought me an on line photography course, which I really want to work more on this year.

I have made a start with the basics, but need to try and put some real time aside to work through some of the projects that help me make more use of the features of our new DSLR camera.  At the moment I am only making use of a fraction of its functionality.

I am hoping that this will lead on to me doing more with my photography and perhaps publishing more photos on line, rather than just in my blog.

Holiday on the Suffolk Coast
Martin and I just love holidaying in this country, particularly exploring new parts of the coast. Neither of us have ever really visited the Suffolk coast and it is somewhere that we really fancy. It is definitely on the agenda for one of our holidays for this year.  We've just got to find the right cottage in the right location, which is proving tricky at the moment.

Christmas in a holiday cottage
For a few years now we've been talking about a family Christmas away from home in a nice holiday cottage. Well, we've already booked somewhere that looks very nice for this year's festivities.

Its called The West Wing and is on the Crow Hill Estate in Yorkshire

Holiday in all of the national parks of Great Britain 
Another thing that Martin and I love about Great Britain is the National Parks.  I would love us to have holidayed in all of them.  This may not be an objective that I fully achieve this year!

So far we have holidayed together on Dartmoor and Exmoor, in The Lake District, Northumberland, The Peak District, The North York Moors, The Pembrokeshire Coast, Snowdonia and The Yorkshire Dales, so we are not doing too bad.

That leaves us with The Brecon Beacons, The Norfolk Broads, The Cairngorms, Loch Lomond, The New Forest and The South Downs.

Our holiday this year to Scotland, near Ballater, will see us spending time in The Cairngorms, so that will be another we can tick off the list.

Upcycle my old placemats

Another crafty objective that I'd like to achieve this year is the upcycle of my old table mats and coasters.  I've made a start and hopefully it won't be too long before I will have completed this project.  So far it is looking pretty good and I think I am going to be happy with the end result.


So, that's the first 10 of the things that I'd like to achieve before I'm 60.  Some I've fully completed already, some are part way and some yet to be started.  You can be sure that I'll keep you posted with how I'm getting on.  Thanks for reading and letting me share.

A Week in the Life ...

Last week was a funny old week. 

Martin headed off for the first of his, every other year, week long trip to Larbert in Scotland with work, with plenty of bad weather, including heavy snow, forecast. I waved him off on Sunday lunchtime in a big white van full of bits of rail and plenty of warm clothing. 

I had a bit of a surprise planned whilst he was away and, within 20 minutes of him heading off, I had made a start on a bit more decorating in the guest bedroom. This is a project that has been ongoing now for nearly a year. We are beginning to wonder if it will ever be finished. 

Whilst he was away I was hoping to get all of the airing cupboard woodwork and doors prepped, painted and re-hung. A small goal, I know, but progress all the same. 

He phoned at 5pm to say there was a problem with the van and he was at Southway services on the M6 waiting for an engineer. Happy days!! He finally arrived at 8pm, having left home at 12.00. He was not the happiest of bunnies. 

He had plenty of snow whilst he was away and we had just a little bit overnight here. 

I also had a few craft projects in mind for having a go at whilst he was away, including a few more bracelets and a start on my decoupage. That coupled with trips to the dentist and the doctor and a school governors meeting made for a pretty busy week. At least I wouldn't have chance to miss him too much. 

The bracelet making went well with no problems and you can see how I got on here. 

The decoupage experience was a bit mixed. I am trying to 'up cycle' some old table mats and coasters I have. When they are done I will do a post giving more detail of how I did it but for now here is a before and after of the first coaster that I've done. I'm quite pleased with it. 

The table mat didn't go so well and ended up covered in bubbles and creases so I pretty much had to pull it apart and will have to start again. I'll keep you posted with how I get on. 

Martin was due back on Friday and we were due to go and see our almost sister-in-law, Alison, in her 'Am Dram' performance of the Copacabana at The Brewhouse Theatre in Burton-on-Trent.

Luckily Martin managed to get away from Larbert early, avoid the snow and any bad traffic and made it back just in time for what was a very colourful and flamboyant show to start off the weekend.

Alison played Conchita Alvarez and looked just amazing as you can see for yourself!

The Veg Plot - March

Getting Ready

Whilst you can just 'rock up' to the plot and chuck a few seeds in and hope for the best, it does pay to do a bit of preparation before you start.

I spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon last week washing out pots and trays, mainly re-cycled mushroom containers and herb pots, in readiness for planting, cleaning up plant labels, sorting through seeds and deciding what I was going to plant, and where.

Sorting through the seeds is always a bit of a voyage of discovery.  Where do they all come from?  We have lots of half packets which, as they are still in date, should be fine from last year.  Some we've had free with magazines and some we were given as gifts.  Martin had two lots of Plant Theatre seeds for Christmas - a Funky Veg kit and a Psychedelic Salad kit.  Both are normal types of veg and salad, but all funky colours.

When sorting through and deciding what to plant, it's important to look at the 'plant by' dates, making sure you plant your oldest seeds first, but discard any that are actually out of date.

When planning what to plant, and where, we always try and take into account how long things take to grow and how much space they will need, this is particularly important when you don't have a lot of growing space.  It's also worth thinking about how much ready grown veg and salad is to actually buy.  If you're trying to save money by growing your own then you don't want to fill your growing space with onions - these will occupy the space for at least six months, stop you growing anything else for that time and you can always buy onions pretty cheaply anyway.

We have a couple of fairly small raised beds which we use for growing veg and salad, but we also have a wide range of pots and planters, which get brought into play throughout the year.

Another thing we've learned over the years is to try and avoid 'having a glut'.  Don't plant a bed full of radishes - you will have more than you can eat and no room to plant anymore!  This year we plan to plant little and often, so as we are eating one row of radishes, another is on the way.  Sounds simple I know, not sure how it will work in practice.

This year I think we plan to fill one of the raised beds with parsnips and beetroot.  We love both and we can just plant and leave them to it.  These are both happy to stay in the ground until we are ready to eat them - they don't tend to spoil if left and, a real bonus, the seeds are big enough to handle so that you can plant them where you want them to grow, with no thinning out required.

The other bed is half full of our self-set strawberries.  The rest we will give over to carrots, spring onions and a couple of varieties of salad leaves, including Little Gem, which is our favourite.  We are going to try and just plant a few of each type of leaves and then keep topping them up as we are eating them, as this is one crop that doesn't always last long enough for you to be able to eat ...... you can only eat so much salad!!

The climbing French beans I will start off in toilet roll middles, more eco-friendly re-cycling, and plant into a large round pot with a tall cane wigwam when they've got their first real leaves.  These are a real bargain as the seeds were all saved from last year's crop.  I should be able to do enough for dad as well as us.

Radishes, we will grow in some small pots we have and again will just plant a pot at a time on an on-going basis, as these do go to seed and get 'woody' quite quickly once they are ready for harvest.

We're also going to have a go at watercress this year, we've never tried this before so it will be a bit of an experiment.  We're also going to give courgettes and tomatoes a go from seed for the first time,  We normally buy these ready grown, but we have lots of seeds and thought we'd just give it a go.

Chives, Red Basil and Coriander will be in terra cotta pots on the window sill.

Last year I grew Cosmos, a tall white heavily flowering variety, which I planted out in any spare pots I had on the patio.  This year we are having another go at flowers and have chosen a red and a yellow Rudbeckia and Love in a Mist, which is blue.  We'll start these off in small pots and then transplant when the seedlings are strong enough.

So, we're ready to go.  We know what we're planting, where and when.

Making a Start

Whilst Easter weekend is always our big planting weekend when Martin will build the plastic green house and we'll be really off, we have made a bit of a start today.  It was just so gorgeous we wanted to be outside and didn't fancy any real hard work.


We started off with the herbs, chives, red basil and coriander, for the kitchen windowsill.  We knew we had just the right pots, it was just a case of hunting through the shed to find them.  We even managed to fashion some home made 'cloches' from, you've guessed it, Diet Pepsi bottles, we always have plenty of those kicking around.

We then planted up the sweet peas in toilet roll middles and the Rudbeckia and Love-in-a-Mist in small pots, all for planting out later on.

We planted a tray of Boltardy beetroot, again for planting out later when it's a bit warmer, and some red chillis.


We finished off with a selection of tomatoes - Tigerella, Moneymaker, Gardener's Delight and Maskotka, a selection of large, salad and cherry.  As I've mentioned, this is a first for us and if everything grows well we will be giving them away to everyone we know!

Top Tips

• Prepare
• Clean your pots
• Collect toilet roll middles and other pots that you can re-use
• Clean up your labels
• Sort through your seeds
• Plan what to plant, when and where
• Plant your oldest seeds first, discarding any which are out of date
• Plant seeds as far apart as the packet says - we've tried squeezing extra rows in, it just doesn't work
• Plan to avoid gluts, unless you absolutely love something and are happy to eat it every day
• Plant stuff that's more expensive to buy, especially if you don't have much space
• Prepare your plot, weed, fertilise and dig over if you need to
• Protect your early planting from late frosts
• Give yourself plenty of time - don't miss your planting window
• Be patient and look forward to eating what you've grown

There's nothing nicer than having friends round for a Summer BBQ and sending the kids into the garden with a list of what needs picking.

and Finally .....

I thank that will do us for now.  All our planting will have to be kept indoors, on the dining room table, until we get the greenhouse built.  We'll definitely have another big push over the Easter weekend.  After all, why would you want to go out anywhere on a Bank Holiday weekend.  We will just keep our fingers crossed for good weather.

I think Martin's in the mood for starting some beer off now.  Who knows, maybe I'll let him do a 'guest blog', something for the boys.

Enjoy the sunshine everyone.

My latest recycling tip

It was Saturday evening and I was sat on the stool in the kitchen whilst Martin was preparing tea, Chicken Dhansak, lovely.  Martin was taking the label off an empty lentil tin, so that he could recycle both the tin and the paper label separately.  I know, who can be bothered?

Anyway, the tin was just sitting there on the draining board and I suddenly had a thought.  We had a pot of basil on the window sill, sitting in a cereal bowl, and I said to Martin, what do you think the basil would like like in the lentil tin?  Obviously he brought up all the practical difficulties of taking this course of action, mainly that there would be no drainage, but he went with my thinking and transferred the basil to the tin.

As you can see, it looked pretty cool.  Our kitchen is tiled in charcoal, cream and a lighter grey, so it looked great on the windowsill.  We would just have to remember to water it ........... but not over water it.
 

We saved the plastic pot that the basil came in for planting in the greenhouse and I sent Martin out to the 'pottering shed' to see what other herb seeds we had as I could quickly vision a row of tin can pots of herbs growing on my windowsill, just like in all the TV cookery programmes.

I must have been watching too many Great Interior Design Challenge programmes - they have been pretty inspiring.