Gardens can be scary places..

Especially if you're like me and haven't a clue what you're doing. I try my best, but I don't generally get things to grow with any great degree of success (unless you count weeds). Mr G, on the other hand, gardens with flair. He seems to instinctively know things like what to plant where, how to lay the garden out, what 'companion planting' means in the vegetable beds and whether or not we should pluck some blossoms off the pear tree in order to ensure a decent crop. Things that a couple of years ago would have sounded like a foreign language to me (and sometimes still do).

Last Summer was a bit of a wash-out (read 'rained for 3 months solid') so I felt fairly disheartened at the end of it when none of my shrubs or flowers fared well. However, a couple of small successes, like last Summer's bumper crop of courgettes and peas and this year's gorgeous display of tulips, has given me the impetus to carry on and sow some more seeds.

Our vegetable garden now consists of three large beds, in which we'll grow potatoes, onions, peas, courgettes, sweetcorn, carrots, pumpkins (if the rats don't keep eating them like last year - even they had it in for me), garlic, spinach, rocket and a few other salad bits. I've sown some of these already and it's exciting waiting for the first few shoots to appear.

I'm also aiming to create a sea of scented flowers near where we eat outside this year and have sown tons of cottage garden-type flower seeds in two large beds. Some of these have started to pop up already and we've put some netting over the most vulnerable bed in order to keep the hens from eating the lot. Here's hoping that even some of them survive so that I don't totally lose faith in this gardening business.

One of the things we decided to add to the garden last year was the orchard. It consists of about 10 apple, pear and damson trees and some of these are starting to break out into the most lovely blossoms. Fruit trees are easy.. all you have to do is leave them alone to do their business. Even I can manage that.

On the hen front, Maisy and Rosie are becoming increasingly chilled out in their new home. Maisy is laying daily eggs for us and it's fabulous to find one still warm in the nest box in the late morning. Rosie is becoming positively slutty, allowing JP to pick her up and walk around the garden with her in his arms and generally following us around wanting to know what we're up to. Yesterday, when we were sitting at the table outside, she wandered over, jumped up on the table and even went as far as to try to get at my tea.

I'll have to have some words with her. No-one messes with my tea.