8th to 15th June

I've had a busy week in my garden, I have finally finished preparing the bottom half of the garden and all the plants have been planted, it is officially a vegetable patch at long last, with sweetcorn, pumpkins, rhubarb, strawberries and sunflowers, it looks lovely and will look even better once things begin to grow and bloom.

My salad box has begun to germinate there are the first signs of lettuce, spring onions and chives, I also have a dwarfbean coming up through the soil, and my aubergines are loving their new home in my greenhouse, and the chillies' flowers have begun to take the form of little green chillies,

every day something new and exciting is happening in the garden.

On saturday we said good bye to Simon & Penny Pumpkin the last two spare plants, as our friends Penny & Simon came up and collected them for their vegetable patch, they gave me a fabulous cookbook called the great allotment cookbook, there are some delicious recipes including Beetroot and Apple Relish, Pear and Chocolate Crumble, and Raspberry and Blackberry Cordial, I'm looking forward to some making of these once my vegetables are ready to harvest.

Today I harvested my first two strawberries before birds, slugs or mice feast upon them, and I also pulled up my first turnip... over the last week the purple and white turnip tops and begun to peep through the brown soil shaded by the lush green turnip leaves, and I'm afraid I am like it with everything, christmas, pregnancy, birthdays, I get excited and can't wait to find out what I'm going to get and gardening is no different, curiosity got the better of me with my turnips I just had to pull one up to see how big they were and how well they were doing,

and yes I did get laughed at for pulling one up of that size but I have seen them that size if not smaller, labelled up as miniature turnips at a sizable price in supermarkets. Anyway, now I have fed my curiosity I shall leave the rest until they are a little larger. (my children were impressed with it and that is all that matters to me!)