It's taken me three months to get around to a first post; goodness knows when the next will be. Should I introduce the blog, perhaps myself? Probably, but I'm simply going to launch into my first diatribe safe in the knowledge that nobody will be reading anyway.
I've recently taken up gardening. Be under no illusions about my skill in this area - by 'gardening' I mean faffing around in pink gloves and occasionally enjoying good luck with something I've shoved in the ground.
Well, I'm not as bad as all that. So far this year I've joined the home-grown vegetable crusade and am currently keeping all fingers crossed for crops of raspberries, purple sprouting broccoli, courgettes (a particularly anxiety-ridden choice), lettuce, spring onion, radishes (I swear I've never eaten a radish in my life), tomatoes, strawberries, basil, runner beans and peas. Given the sheer quantity of things in the ground, I feel I've hedged (excuse the pun) my bets and can expect something edible by August.
Now, I feel quite proud of the above list. Whether anything grows or not is beside the point: that list represents hours of work spent on a hobby my entire family believed would have burnt itself out within the first month. I'm rather fickle when it comes to new things...
What worries me most is that after years of believing myself to be something of a feminist I find myself wanting to spend large chunks of time growing vegetables, making cakes and being homely. The other day I made a quiche and enjoyed it (both the making and the eating.)
To bring me down to earth with a thud I remember the perhaps rash decision made earlier to pull up half the paving slabs in our front garden. The idea is that the space can be used as a new flower bed, and will be unutterably lovely, breathtaking, satisfying. In the short time before a garden centre trip, however, it is a large, empty piece of brown that I'm sure will give me the night terrors.
Perhaps people will think we've been robbed?
