Noticing the days lengthen and the blossom gently springing to life makes me think of how I want to spend my long summer days and I know this of me, it is not weeding. It took me quite a few years of married life to realise that most of the gardening whether that be on an allotment or a patch of lawn with flower borders needed to be planned and attended to by the end of the Easter weekend. Miss that magical four day slot and life seems to move on at such an incredible speed that one never seems to catch up.  Of course if Easter is particularly early, one might need to hold fire on the tenderest of plants and certainly tomatoes and runner beans are a definite no go, but the planning and the sheer hard labour of that first cut on the lawn or that first dig of the earth can be done.

This year we plan to bring a little of the allotment back into our garden. We have neither the energy or the inclination for an allotment plot, not least that the waiting lists are many years long but what we do want to bring back are the best bits. And for us those are a greenhouse filled with the tastes of summer, warm aromatic tomatoes, crunchy yet juicy cucumbers, bright and glossy peppers and dark and mysterious aubergines and perhaps just a few runner and french beans scattered through the flower border.   Somewhere we can play and construct feats of Heath Robinson engineering to grow the tomatoes up, we can talk animatedly about newly discovered pests and diseases and wonder aloud if we have the watering versus feeding regime about right.  And talk we will, in the garden long into the summers evening, with candlelight, the smell of tomatoes and just a glass or two of home brewed beer.

Construction started, our very own greenhouse,  I’m just so excited, what fun it will be.