Off to a good start

I do have to say, when you have a reason to be productive, other than the normal reasons, like it needs doing or you’re being paid for it, then you manage to find some kind of inner energy to make things happen.  Having said that we are only on day 2 of Make May Count.

Today, being Saturday, I had a bit of a lie in and watched some gardening videos on You Tube.  That is my weekly indulgence and is often the only time I can catch up on my favourites totally guilt free.  There just seems something wrong with watching You Tube videos at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday, no matter how you try to justify to yourself that it is ‘work related’.

The day started off well, it was nice and sunny with a warm breeze from the north, so when I went into the garden to open the greenhouse and give everything a drink, I walked past one of my 1 metre by 1 metre beds and like always noticed it was weedy and made a note to self to do something about it at some point.  But then I chastised myself.  I should do something about it now.  So, I grabbed a bucket and in 10 minutes the whole thing was clear of everything that shouldn’t be there.

Then back in the house I took on not one, but two projects.  The first one had caused great stress the previous weekend as it was all about computers and sometimes, no matter how hard you try to do something that is supposed to be sensible, it just doesn’t work.   We bought an old desk computer a few months ago that we got modified to become a storage server for all my millions of photos, because our internet is too bad to send them up to the cloud and I have lost too many photos in those portable hard drives as they are quite fragile.  I still have them, in case, one day by some miracle, technology will improve to the point that it will be cheap and easy to retrieve them.  At this point it is neither cheap or easy.  Last weekend, no matter how hard I tried it just wouldn’t work.  As we were now in Level 3, Hubby the Un-Gardener can venture a little further afield and went back to our IT guys and got them to look at the computer and today it is super fast and easy and I have been safely sending thousands of photos into their new forever home and importantly freeing up space on my phone and computer as both are screaming at me in red that they are within an inch of being full.

While that was sorting itself out in a set and forget kind of way, I stepped into the kitchen to deal with some of my chilies and peppers.  I have been on a bit of a mission to treat them in a way that brings out their best and today I made a relish and a hot sauce.  I will go into more detail with this soon as it has been such a long project, with such care taken that I want to do it more justice than a brief mention now.

Yesterday I was productive too, I got my garlic in.  Even though the old wives tale is to plant them on the shortest day, but I find when I plant them then, they don’t get enough of a chance to get going before the rust strikes.  So if I go early they manage to be big and strong enough to brush off the inevitable rust and still product big fat bulbs.

The funny thing was Hubby the Un-Gardener came out into the garden while I was planting them and was blown away at how big the cloves were and complained bitterly about having only fiddly, piddly little ones in the kitchen to cook with.   But I had saved my best ones from last season because that is what you do, in hope that the next harvest will be big fat ones, just like their parents.  Maybe one day I will be successful and he’ll be able to use big fat garlic in the kitchen.

But now the weather has closed in and the temperature has dropped so I think now is a good time to say enough is enough for today.  I made the day count.

Come again soon – I still have to get my brassica seedlings in.

Sarah the Gardener : o)

#MakeMayCount