How does your garden grow?

Unfortunately, mine is a tad overgrown! The grass around the raised beds is going mad and badly needs strimming, the courgettes are in full swing, the runner beans are not running in the right direction and the lettuces have bolted. All because I have been unable to give it enough attention in the past couple of weeks due to our illnesses. The chickens are faring better - I must get some photos!

I decided on Monday evening that there was just no way that I was going to manage to be at gym for three hours a day all week so I rang and told the Head Coach that I would have to drop back to three alternate days - yesterday, tomorrow and Friday. Tomorrow I have to drive the motorhome to get there as the Volvo failed the MOT abysmally and is in the garage to get repaired and the FH needs my Astra tomorrow to pick up another couple of OAPs to take them with him to the weekly lunch meeting. They would never manage the steps up into the motorhome, so I get landed with that. I'm a little nervous about taking it out on my own, but if I have to do any reversing, I will station a child in the back window to tell me when to stop!!

I have been bad this month for buying books - another package arrived today from the Book People with Willie somebody's chocolate recipe book, three novels which were on offer fopr £6 the three, a vegetable growing handbook from the River Cottage series, and a pack of books: Low Cost Living, Proper Hen keeping, and a year in the veg garden. And, saving the best for last, Harry Eastwood's new book about getting veg into cakes - can't wait to try some! A way to use courgettes in fancy cupcakes has got to be good! I bought all of that lot for less than £25 so I was a happy reader today, browsing through that lot.

Rest was the order of the day this morning - I sat and watched a DVD with the EFG whilst the YFG was at gym - she still got to go as a friend took her for me as she was taking along her own daughter. We watched Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Christopher Plummer - the EFG thought that Captain Von Trapp would have been "past it" by now, as she says, so we were impressed that he was still acting. This afternoon, I turned 9lbs of plums into jam - and although it hasn't set up terribly well, it does taste good, I am reliably informed. However, since the FH was super efficient and took a load of glass jars and bottles to the recycling two weeks ago, I had no jam jars at all for the bottling of the jam and have ended up using Kilner jars. They are the big ones, so each jar should last a couple of weeks!!