Typecast

I've never really got to grips with gardening. The garden has always been a place for the children to play out, somewhere for the dog to have a bit of a run around and we have never been creative, just always keeping on top of tidying up. Then when you move to a house with just a yard - and not even a little patch at the front - you miss your garden dreadfully. On Monday, I came home from work to be told that we had acquired an allotment. This was a bit out of the blue, to say the least. Kev had been helping a friend with his own allotment and heard that a few plots had come up for rent. In a simple case of being in the right place at the right time and having the annual ground rent available, we became the leaseholders of Plot 30.   I was a bit dubious - Kev sometimes has fantastic ideas and goes at them head on, only for the enthusiasm to fizzle out after a short while. This time I think (and hope) it's different. The allotment is somewhere where he can go to escap...

Our back yard is the smallest yard in the history of terraced housing in old mill towns.  It has to be.  There isn't enough room to swing a ladybird once you've taken into account the space used up by the two wheelie bins, the makeshift shed that houses chopped wood for the log burner, the plastic garden table and chairs and the rusting barbecue.  So I haven't really invested much time into making it look 'nice' out there. Picture Credit: BBC A while back I sent off for the BBC Dig In free seeds, thinking that I'd donate them to my son's primary school.  They duly arrived, I sent him off to school with the envelope and he returned with it saying that they school had been donated loads of seeds and they couldn't use them all.  Since then (approximately 9 weeks) the envelope of seeds has sat on the desk in the front room, waiting for someone to do something with them . I was bored last Saturday so I was wandering round the kitchen, opening and cl...