Business as usual – just not the right kind of business.

Tuesdays are almost always never fun.  It is when I have to stay inside, whatever the weather and crunch numbers until they are all crunchy and make sense and balance books to get them so perfect you could measure them with a spirit level.  I really don’t know how this became my responsibility as I am really not that good at maths.  I think it is more that I am the best of a bad bunch.   So that is where you will usually find me on a Tuesday… staring out the window, wishing I was in the garden!

It is particularly terrible when the sun is shining. It is even worse when the sun is shining, and it is the middle of winter and we haven’t seen sun in ages.  Man I hate those days.  Sometimes I can race through as fast as I can and find my freedom early and escape to the garden, like some kind of convict who has found the key in his cell – celebrating his premature liberation, but looking over his shoulder in case there has been some kind of mistake.  Today was not one of those days.

One of the drawbacks to swanning off for weeks on end to bob about in the Pacific Ocean is when you get back there are responsibilities waiting to hold you accountable or is that captive?  I was inside all day and hardly moved, hunched over my laptop working away furiously.  Hubby the Un-Gardener provided me with endless cups of tea, without which I may have withered away.  I didn’t get it finished, so will be there again tomorrow – hopefully only briefly as the weather forecast has made some pretty bold promises about the sun making an appearance through the clouds, and I for one want to be there to see it.

I did make one sneaky trip to the greenhouse to check on the onion seeds I sowed yesterday.  They haven’t popped up yet.  I am a bit anxious about them as I have never sowed them this late before and I hadn’t intended to.  I put some in before we went away, but on our return there was nothing to show for them, I think something may have eaten them as they raised their heads.  Well not this time, I shall be keeping a careful watch.

I usually work with the old adage “plant on the shortest day and harvest on the longest.”  The shortest day is in about ten days – which is exciting.  It’s all downhill to summer from then on!  So I normally would have had my onions seeds in a good six to eight weeks ago so they are big and strong for planting out.

But the problem is the longest day is four days before Christmas and harvesting onions is the furthest thing from my mind.  Then we end up going on our summer holiday and so by the time I get to my onions they have had about a month too long, and it shows.  So this year I had perfectly timed the sowing to make sure the harvest is in the week we get back from summer holidays.  Only they didn’t come up.  So now I reckon I am going to be about six to eight weeks past Christmas when I harvest them, when I was only hoping to be three or four weeks late at a push.  This has me very nervous.  If this lot don’t come up, my reputation for vegetable self-sufficiency will be in tatters and I will have to sneak to the store under the cover of darkness to buy some from goodness knows where!

Come again soon – I WILL see the light of day… hopefully

Sarah the Gardener  :  o )