One of the things I’m looking forward to most about owning our own house is the garden.  Up until now in our rented houses, I’ve half-heartedly planted up pots and hanging baskets but I’ve never felt much motivation to do anything else, despite being very keen to grow our own vegetables and maybe some berries.  It’s just too frustrating knowing that any work I do in the garden will not benefit us in the long-term as we may not be staying there for more than one summer.  Now it looks like we might be able to stay here for as long as we want, we are excitedly making plans for the garden (and the house…but of course house plans are relatively expensive so they’ll have to wait!).

 Over the summer we are planning to clear away the bushes beside the play house.  There’s a silver birch where the bushes start to get taller, so we’ll only clear as far as there.  Then we’re going to move the playhouse and, in the Autumn, dig that whole regtangle over with some rotted manure from a friend with a farm ready to grow some vegetables in next year.

 This weekend, we’re going to cut down the left hand side of this buddleia (can you see that branch growing diagonally?  It’s that one we’ll cut off).  We’re then going to move the hexagonal wooden ’sand pit’ thing into that space, which gets a lot of sun from noon onwards, fill it with compost from Mum and Dad’s ancient compost bin and plant a load of herbs I bought yesterday.

Yesterday the girls sowed their sunflower seeds that Flopsy won when playing pass-the-parcel at her friend’s birthday party:

  And I planted sweet peas:

And Cotton-tail lazed about on her mat:

Just to round off the photos post, here’s Mopsy before her bicycle accident on Saturday:  

and a great action shot of them both in the paddling pool: