Feb 19th, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Gardening

For the first time in ages I am not booked in on a test this week so I am taking the opportunity to get the garden cleaned up in time for spring. Everything looks a right mess at the moment – partially because it always does in February, and partially because we were so busy in the late summer and autumn last year that I let things go a bit.

Which leads me on to a potentially embarrassing confession. After all the song and dance I made about growing vegetables last year – I have decided that enough is enough and I am scaling right back this year. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that growing even quarter of the food we need to live on is not compatible with being a neophyte gardener with a (more than) full time job doing security testing. So this year I am just going to do tomatoes, herbs and a few other things, and I am replacing the huge unmanageable greenhouse (which I never did manage to get repaired) and polytunnel with a much smaller biome greenhouse. And I am going to buy my plants as seedlings rather than growing them from scratch.

I have to admit that this is a defeat of a sort, but it should give me a bit more time to do the things I really enjoy this year. Also the greenhouse and polytunnel are going to a good home as they are going to be part of the new Lochgoilhead community hub project (provided we can manage to take the greenhouse down and re-erect it which may be quite an undertaking).

So I was gardening today in between the showers with a light heart and suddenly saw a bird which for a moment I took for an immature blue tit because it was so small. But in fact it was a goldcrest (UK’s smallest bird). They are supposed to be quite common but I have never seen one here before. The photo on this post has the goldcrest in it somewhere though I would challenge anyone to find it as it was very small and in constant motion.